Jul 15, 2011 14:03 GMT  ·  By

The NASA MESSENGER spacecraft is providing new datasets on the surface of Mercury, the innermost planet in our solar system. Unlike Mars or Venus, this object is relatively little understood.

The main reason for that is the huge amount of technical difficulties associated with exploring this remote world. Temperatures in its atmosphere reach hundreds of degrees, so spacecraft have a really tough time just remaining operational.

But the American space agency appears to have hit the jackpot with the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) probe, which achieved orbital insertion around the planet on March 18, 2011.

After passing through commissioning, testing and calibration stages, the spacecraft began collecting scientific data on the puzzling planet. The world is tidally locked with the Sun, which means that it always keeps the same face oriented towards the star.

What experts are particularly interested in at this stage is the object's surface. It appears to be riddled with very old impact craters, which MESSENGER is excellently equipped to study. Gaining more insight into their history might reveal how Mercury itself evolved over the eons.

The vast majority of planets and moons in the solar system share one thing in common, and that is a key set of traits related to craters. In other words, the size, shapes and structures these features display are consistent from Mercury to Saturn's moons.

When experts have enough data on the physical processes that were at work when the features were formed, they can feed the information in computer models and numerical simulations, which then bring the ancient events back to life.

By doing so, geologists can extract new surface properties from existing datasets. They can identify the composition of the soil, the existence of potential mineral or ice deposits, as well as the proportions that govern a space body's surface, Universe Today reports.

Some of the data collected by MESSENGER are already indicating a similarity between craters there and on Mars. One common aspect is the amount of surface gravitational acceleration.

“Simple craters tend to be bowl shaped, whereas complex craters have terraced walls and can contain a central peak. If gravity were the dominant factor controlling the transition diameter, one would expect that this diameter would be similar on Mercury and Mars,” the team says.

The work was carried out by experts at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), who are also managing the mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, in Washington, DC.

“As MESSENGER continues to orbit the innermost planet, new images and altimetry expand the possibilities for in-depth studies of Mercury’s craters on a daily basis. Those studies will further our understanding of the cratering process on Mercury and throughout the Solar System,” the group adds.