News Releases

MESSENGER's Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) will measure the topography or surface relief of the northern hemisphere of Mercury. That data will be used to create topographic maps, which will help characterize the geologic history of the planet.

Scientists working with data from NASA’s Cassini mission — now in its sixth year of operations at Saturn — have discovered an electrical current running between Saturn and its moon Enceladus that creates an observable emission on the ringed planet.

One of the primary science goals of MESSENGER is to study Mercury's very thin atmosphere, or exosphere. Although observations of the exosphere from orbit have begun, these data must be carefully calibrated, and analysis is still underway.

The spacecraft will fly around Mercury 700 times over the next 12 months, and its instruments will perform the first complete reconnaissance of the cratered planet’s geochemistry, geophysics, geological history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment.

MESSENGER has delivered its first image since entering orbit about Mercury on March 17. It was taken today at 5:20 am EDT by the Mercury Dual Imaging System as the spacecraft sailed high above Mercury’s south pole, and provides a glimpse of portions of Mercury’s surface not previously seen by spacecraft.

NASA will release the first orbital image of Mercury's surface, including previously unseen terrain, on Tuesday afternoon, March 29.

John Sommerer, head of the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., has been named one of the inaugural Gilman Scholars by university President Ronald J. Daniels and Provost Lloyd B. Minor.

Data from its first three days in orbit about Mercury have confirmed the initial assessment of the spacecraft team that MESSENGER is in its intended orbit and operating nominally.

At 9:10 p.m. EDT, engieers in the MESSENGER Mission Operations Center at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., received the anticipated radiometric signals confirming nominal burn shutdown and successful insertion of the MESSENGER probe into orbit around the planet Mercury.

As spring continues to unfold at Saturn, April showers on the planet’s largest moon, Titan, have brought methane rain to its equatorial deserts, as revealed in images captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This is the first time scientists have obtained current evidence of rain soaking Titan’s surface at low latitudes.