Using data from NASA's MESSENGER mission that orbited Mercury for four years, a new digital model of the planet reveals its unique landscape, while other maps reveal various characteristics of the planet such as its shadowed north pole.
"The wealth of these data, greatly enhanced by the extension of MESSENGER's primary one-year orbital mission to more than four years, has already enabled and will continue to enable exciting scientific discoveries about Mercury for decades to come," said Susan Ensor, manager of the MESSENGER Science Operations Center.
The global digital-elevation model (DEM) of Mercury, the first of its kind, was created from more than 10,000 images taken by the spacecraft and gives viewers a close-up look at the wide-open spaces of the tiny planet.
Another Mercury map released by NASA showed the planet's northern poles, which possess long shadows due to the sun sitting very low in this region. Furthermore, the MESSENGER revealed that past volcanic activity buried the northern region under lava as much as a mile deep.
The northern map was possible thanks to the MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), which allowed the team to use its filters to minimize shadows and reveal the volcanic plains that line the northern landscape.
"This has become one of my favorite maps of Mercury," said Nancy Chabot, a MDIS Instrument Scientist from John Hopkins University. "Now that it is available, I'm looking forward to it being used to investigate this epic volcanic event that shaped Mercury's surface."
After the MESSENGER's mission ended last April it was led to its destruction by crashing into the planet, although the data from its travels, including the Mercury maps, will help scientists address questions of space for years to come.
"During its four years of orbital observations, MESSENGER revealed the global characteristics of one of our closest planetary neighbors for the first time," said Sean Solomon, the MESSENGER mission's principal investigator. "MESSENGER's scientists and engineers hope that data from the mission will continue to be utilized by the planetary science community for years to come, not only to study the nature of the innermost planet, but [also] to address broader questions about the formation and evolution of the inner solar system more generally."
