May 14, 2013
Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter At first glance, the planet Mercury may bear a striking resemblance to our own Moon. True, both are heavily-cratered, airless worlds that hide pockets of ice inside polar shadows… but there the similarities end. In addition to being compositionally different than [...]
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March 27, 2013
Move over, Tolkien & Tryggvadóttir. Yesterday, an announcement was made that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved proposed names for nine new craters on the planet Mercury. The names honor deceased writers, artists and musicians following the convention established by the IAU for naming features on the innermost world. The announcement comes as NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has completed mapping of [...]
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