Messenger sends back trove of Mercury images
Wednesday, March 30, 2011 - 20:30
in Astronomy & Space
NASA begins releasing images from the first spacecraft to orbit the closest planet to the sun, including polar regions that might contain ice.After a 6 1/2 -year wait as a small craft voyaged through space, planetary scientists finally got an up-close look at Mercury's pockmarked surface this week — at the pale, spidery impact crater named Debussy, at chains of smaller craters around the north pole they'd never seen before and at other heretofore mysterious polar regions.