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MESSENGER Sees a Smoother Side of Mercury

March 22, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter During its two years in orbit around Mercury — as well as several more years performing flybys — the MESSENGER spacecraft has taken over 150,000 images of the innermost planet, giving us a look at its incredibly rugged, Sun-scoured surface like [...]

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Are Venus’ Volcanoes Still Active?

December 3, 2012

Artist’s impression of an active volcano on Venus (ESA/AOES) Incredibly dense, visually opaque and loaded with caustic sulfuric acid, Venus’ atmosphere oppresses a scorched, rocky surface baking in planet-wide 425 ºC (800 ºF) temperatures. Although volcanoes have been mapped on our neighboring planet’s surface, some scientists believe the majority of them have remained inactive — at [...]

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Titan Shines in Latest Cassini Shots

December 3, 2012

Color-composite raw image of Titan’s southern hemisphere. Note the growing south polar vortex. (NASA/JPL/SSI/Jason Major) Last Thursday, November 29, Cassini sailed past Titan for yet another close encounter, coming within 1,014 kilometers (603 miles) of the cloud-covered moon in order to investigate its thick, complex atmosphere. Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), Composite Infrared [...]

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Mercury’s Many Colors

July 26, 2012

Although composited from expanded wavelengths of light, this wide-angle image from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows the amazing variation of colors and tones to be found on Mercury’s Sun-scoured surface. Remove this ad

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Postcards From The (Inner) Edge

July 17, 2012

As the world turns its gaze outward in anticipation of the arrival of Mars Science Laboratory — with its hair-raising “seven minutes of terror” landing — let’s take a moment to look back inward, where MESSENGER is still faithfully orbiting the first rock from the Sun, Mercury, and sending back images that could only have [...]

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