[meteorite-list] MESSENGER Team Delivers Data from First Full Mercury Solar Day to Planetary Data System

[Ron Baalke]

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=196

MESSENGER Mission News
March 8, 2012

MESSENGER Team Delivers Data from First Full Mercury Solar Day to
Planetary Data System

Data collected during MESSENGER's third through sixth month in orbit
around Mercury were released to the public today by the Planetary Data
System (PDS), an organization that archives and distributes all of
NASA's planetary mission data. With this release, data are now available
to the public for the first full Mercury solar day of MESSENGER orbital
operations.

Calibrated data from all seven of MESSENGER's science instruments, plus
radio science data from the spacecraft telecommunications system, are
included in this release. The science results have shed light on many
aspects of Mercury, including its global magnetic field, the dynamics of
its exosphere, its surface composition, its geological evolution, and
its interior structure.

The images included in this release provide monochrome views at 250
meters per pixel and eight-color image sets at 1 kilometer per pixel.
Apart from small gaps, many of which have already been filled by
subsequent imaging, these images cover the entire planet under lighting
conditions ideal either for assessing the form of Mercury's surface
features or for determining the color and compositional variations
across the planet.

For more than two decades, NASA has required all of its planetary
missions to archive data in the PDS, an active archive that makes
available well-documented, peer-reviewed data to the research community.
The PDS includes eight university/research center science teams, called
discipline nodes, each of which specializes in a specific area of
planetary data. The contributions from these nodes provide a data-rich
source for scientists, researchers, and developers.

The data for this delivery are archived and available online at
http://pds.nasa.gov/subscription_service/SS-20120308.html, and all of
the MESSENGER data archived at the PDS thus far are available at
http://pds.nasa.gov. As of this release, MESSENGER will have delivered
1.7 terabytes of raw and calibrated data to the PDS, including more than
62,355 images (of which 49,275 are from orbit). The team will submit
four more PDS deliveries at six-month intervals from MESSENGER's primary
orbital mission and its extended mission.

The MESSENGER team has created a software tool with which the public can
view data from this delivery. ACT-REACT-QuickMap provides an interactive
Web interface to MESSENGER data. Developed by Applied Coherent
Technology Corporation, the software allows users to examine global
mosaics constructed with high-resolution images from this and previous
PDS deliveries.

The tool also provides weekly updates of coverage for surface-observing
instruments, as well as the status of specially targeted MDIS
observations. Information is also available that can be used to locate
MESSENGER data products at the PDS. QuickMap can be accessed via links
on each of the MESSENGER websites at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ and
http://www.nasa.gov/messenger. The MDIS mosaics can be downloaded from
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mosaics.html. 

"This latest release marks another important milestone in the sharing of
MESSENGER data with planetary scientists and the public," adds MESSENGER
Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington. "Mercury has presented us with many mysteries to date, and
solving those mysteries will take new ideas and new analyses from
throughout the scientific community."
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MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and
Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet
Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest
to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and
after flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury will start a yearlong study of
its target planet in March 2011. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, leads the mission as Principal Investigator.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates
the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA.