Messenger spies Mercury in detail (BBC)

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By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News

The US space agency's (Nasa) Messenger spacecraft is starting to open up a whole new vista on the planet Mercury.

The probe went into orbit around the inner-most world in March, and has been relaying a stream of data ever since.

Its latest pictures from just a few hundred kilometres above the surface are expected to provide important new clues to the origin of the planet and its geological history.

Nasa believes much of what we thought about Mercury will need to be revised.

"We had many ideas about Mercury that were incomplete and ill-formed that came out of our three flybys with Messenger and the flybys in the 1970s by the first spacecraft to visit Mercury, Mariner 10," said Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, US.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13796255

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/index.html

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1. MESSENGER Web Site messenger.jhuapl.edu

MESSENGER