The overheated, underappreciated runt of the solar system is finally getting some attention. Mostly ignored since a brief fly-by in the 1970s, Mercury, our solar system’s smallest, swiftest planet, received a longer house call last March: NASA’s $450 million Messenger probe, which achieved orbit, a tricky feat never before attempted.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington) - A depiction of the MESSENGER spacecraft is shown flying over Mercury's surface displayed in enhanced color during the mission's second Mercury flyby in 2008.
Now, after poring over 100,000 images and reams of other Messenger data, space scientists have achieved consensus: Mercury is one weird world .... Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com
