Posted by Ray Katz in NASA, current, featured, history
Exploring Mercury
The behavior of the orbit of Mercury provided support for Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Today, people still continue to study the nearest planet to the sun—sometimes with space probes.
Mariner 10: Earlier visitor to Mercury
Storms on the planet
The Mercury Messenger has been whipping around the planet. And, it’s discovered that the the planet has dust storms whipping across it. This all happens because of “solar wind”, magnetic particles emitted by the Sun which creates a process called “magnetic reconnection.” I don’t understand this, but I’d love to see photos of the dust storms on Mercury.
Early probe to Mercury
Although it gets considerably less attention than Mars, we’ve been exploring Mercury for quite some time. Mariner 10 visited the planet in 1974, after first going to Venus. NASA issued a book, an atlas of Venus, showing what the planet looked like to Mariner 10. It looks, pretty much, like the moon. A grey globe with craters.
