Messenger to Mercury

The Messenger probe has arrived in proximity of Mercury. And it's churning out plenty of new data about our small and distant neighbor. The false color image above is colored to discriminate among common minerals. The left most image is closer to what the human eye would see. So far there's not enough data to fully distinguish the color regions down to specific minerals. And Messenger is still far enough away that its instruments aren't able to build up enough exposure time. But not to worry. Once in orbit about Mercury, the full suite of instruments and imaging will be put to full use to further mine (no pun intended) the new wealth of information about Mercury.

Messenger has three years yet to enter Mercurian orbit. It is using gravity-assist from the sun to complete its trip...one of those sneaky secrets of rocket scientists to make the sun work for them instead of against them. That is why it flew close by Mercury but still has three years to catch orbit. And yet those flybys have revealed a great deal about Mercury. Such as, the planet's magnetic moment is very nearly centered and it is strongly aligned with Mercury's rotation axis; just two degrees of tilt. What? Bingo...the model's of Mercury's mag field generated by science are in close agreement with reality.

What does this mean to you and why should you care? It's like looking in on the elderly neighbor down the street. A neighborhood has a life made up of the combination of each person on the street. You can stay in the house and ignore everyone, but what do you miss by that? How much richer is your life by the interactions with people? What do you learn from them and how does it affect you afterwards? Or for me, I like to think of all the stories my grandmother used to tell me. She was an excellent story teller and every story was entertaining and, as I later realized, educational. Even the ones not told for that primary reason still had lessons of life, and lessons of my grandmother, who she was and how she affected the family.

Mercury is our neighbor. We can become enriched and wiser by watching and listening and checking in on it now and then. If you think that's silly or if you pass off the chance to learn, your life will be poorer. How can anyone not be interested?