Messenger Flies by Mercury

Riding with Robots writes "Today, more than three decades after the last spacecraft visited Mercury, Messenger buzzed just 200 kilometers above the planet's surface. During the encounter, the robotic spacecraft conducted a range of scientific observations, including imaging swaths of Mercury's surface that have never been seen up close before. A few of the first pictures are now available, with many more to come in the next few days."

Three Cheers for NASA!

[spaceyhackerlady]

Hats off to the folks who put this together. I was in high school the last time we saw any closeup pictures of Mercury. Every time we send probes to other panets we find out really cool stuff. Messenger should be no exception.

If we can't go there ourselves, we can send robots. Robots are cool. :-)

...laura

Re:Oops...

[Inda]

In Quîndecimber?

14 months is a long time to wait.

Re:Correction

[the_other_chewey]

The first images from the close approach will not be available until 01/05/08

Could we please use unambiguous date formatting?
Something like YYYY-MM-DD?
I guess you actually meant 2008-01-15 with a typo.

Re:Again?

[Amorymeltzer]

Just as in Biology, a lot of what is observed in Astronomy is what's big, pretty, and easy. Venus and Mercury are two planets that are largely unappealing by normal standards - way too hot, completely dead and barren. It's always good to see good science being done for the sake of science, not public opinion. Cassini and the rovers were fantastic, but the less glamorous missions are just as important to our understanding.

Re:Photos are FAKE

[rubycodez]

stare for a tenth of a second at the Sun through 8x binoculars. then you will have some idea why a camera that can image mercury's sunlit surface can't detect stars.

Re:Correction

[the_other_chewey]

How is 2008-01-05 unambiguous?

ISO 8601.
Additionally, I'm completely unaware of anyone or anyplace using
YYYY-DD-MM as a date format, and my googleing seems to confirm that.

Re:Correction

[Mr. Slippery]

ISO 8601.

Standardization and unambiguity are different beasts.

Re:Correction

[MightyYar]

I'll accept that the US is the last holdout of Imperial units when I can't walk into any pub in London and hear people ordering "pints".