Think the moon has many craters? New photos from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury show the tiny inner planet has far more impressive battle scars from regular high-speed peltings by space rocks.
NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, the first to orbit Mercury, is carrying an instrument designed and built at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
Images from the on-board camera reveal a planet pockmarked from pieces of asteroids and comets.
“Mercury has had an exposed surface for at least 3.5 (billion) to 4 billion years, and some of those surfaces are extremely cratered to the point where there are so many craters, they start to obscure one another,” said mission chief scientist Sean Solomon. The Associated Press; NASA photo
