NASA has released the first global digital model of Mercury’s peaks and valleys, revealing in stunning detail the topography of the innermost planet.
The model, compiled from more than 100,000 images taken by the Messenger probe during more than four years in orbit around Mercury, is represented in an animation showing the planet’s high and low points and everything in between.
The model and other new data pave the way to explore and fully explain the planet’s geologic history, scientists say.
“The wealth of these data … will continue to enable exciting scientific discoveries about Mercury for decades to come,” says Susan Ensor, manager of the Messenger science operations center and a software engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
