Mercury MESSENGER Sends 363 NEW HD Photos This Afternoon

Sometime this afternoon, NASA is set to release 363 new HD photographs from the Mercury orbiting observer, "MESSENGER".

It is said these will be secrete spilling photos which will give humans unprecedented insight into the planet, as never before areas and features will be visible.

For now, you can study Mercury in Google Earth, here.
Will we see inhabitable zones in icy crater shadows? Will all the photos be black and white? We'll have to wait for the download!


MESSENGER Mission News
March 28, 2011
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/
NASA to Release MESSENGER's First Orbital Images Of Mercury
NASA will release the first orbital image of Mercury's surface, including previously unseen terrain, on Tuesday afternoon, March 29. Several other images will be available Wednesday, March 30, in conjunction with a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT to discuss these initial orbital images taken from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER, entered orbit March 17 after completing more than a dozen laps within the inner solar system during the past 6.6 years.

Media teleconference participants are:
-- Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator, Carnegie Institution of Washington
-- Eric Finnegan, MESSENGER mission systems engineer, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel. Md.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov or 202-358-1726 for dial-in instructions.

During the teleconference, MESSENGER information and images will be available at http://www.nasa.gov/messenger.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA's website at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.
MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and entered orbit about Mercury on March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011 UTC) to begin a yearlong study of its target planet. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.