October 7, 2008 11:52 AM PDT
On Monday, NASA's Messenger spacecraft drew within 125 miles of Mercury in its second pass by the planet within the past year. The probe is following a route that includes bouncing from planet to planet to slow itself down enough to orbit Mercury in March 2011.
This photo was taken 90 minutes after its closest approach Monday and shows a bright crater near the middle called Kuiper which was first discovered by Mariner 10 in the 1970s. A new discovery is the large pattern of rays that extend from the northern region of Mercury to regions south of Kuiper.
Photo by NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Caption by
Andy Smith
