On The Planets

Mercury's Surprising 'Personality' Revealed For the First Time

A NASA spacecraft circling Mercury is returning spectacular photos of the planet — and delivering some tantalizing surprises about the tiny, scorched world.

On March 17, NASA's Messenger probe became the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury . Since then, Messenger has already snapped more than 20,000 pictures and made observations that could help unlock long-standing mysteries of the solar system's innermost planet, researchers announced at a press conference today (June 16).

"We had many ideas about Mercury that were incomplete, ill-formed," said Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "Many of those ideas are now having to be cast aside as we see orbital data for the first time." [ Latest Messenger Photos of Mercury ]

Mercury has 'personality'

Messenger is photographing every inch of Mercury's surface from orbit, and some of its early pictures have revealed huge expanses of volcanic deposits near the planet's north pole. These features were detected by Messenger and NASA's Mariner 10 probe on previous Mercury flybys, but the new observations map them out in greater detail. [ Infographic: The Messenger Mission ]

"Now we're seeing their full extent for the first time," said Messenger scientist Brett Denevi of Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). And that extent is impressive; the northern volcanic plains cover 1.54 million square miles (4 million square kilometers) — nearly half the size of the continental United States .

These new observations help confirm that volcanism has substantially shaped Mercury's crust and surface for much of its history, researchers said.

Messenger has been scrutinizing Mercury with more than just its camera gear. The probe's X-ray spectrometer, for example, has already discovered that the planet's surface is made of different stuff than the moon, which is dominated by feldspar-rich rock.

The spectrometer has also detected surprisingly high levels of sulfur at the planet's surface, which could help scientists understand the nature of Mercury's origin and volcanism, researchers said.

So far, the spacecraft's observations are putting the lie to the notion that Mercury is similar to the moon. In fact, the early returns indicate that it's also very different than the other terrestrial planets, in ways that are only just beginning to come clear.

"Mercury really is a world in and of its own," said Messenger project scientist Ralph McNutt of APL. "Just like the Earth, it's got its own personality.

Featured Artist: Joelle Maddyson “Making the Planets Align ...

There is so much more to being a musician than I believe we all really understand. We see the “fame” aspect daily on our televisions or hear it on our radio’s, but we forget about what’s going on behind the scenes; the non-stop effort and diligence it takes to create, live and breathe that creative process that every musician endures on a daily basis. It’s a process that engulfs every part of every musician searching for their own creativity in an effort to explain in song what we are all dying to say ourselves…but just can’t or don’t know how. For Nashville’s own Joelle Maddyson, music and the ability to live in song seems to flow from her like a river of clarity. Her sultry vocal and piano stylings combine a sense of wonderment with every breath…it’s as if she’s playing a soundtrack to our lives. With the release of her debut album “Here I Stand” available now on itunes, I sat down with Maddyson to discuss her music, Nashville, and how she is making the planets align.