First spacecraft to place itself in orbit around Mercury, the messenger probe finished its race in this region on April 30, 2015. Established from laser images and data made by Messenger, this topographic card, with the janacek crater at the top left and its 48 km in diameter, details the northeast portion of the Shakespeare basin. It is in the middle of this area that Messenger crashed at the speed of almost 4 kilometers per second (around 14,000 km/h), causing a new crater of some 16 m in diameter in passing. This region turning their backs on the earth, the impact could not be observed in the telescope, but the final absence of radio contact made it possible to confirm that Messenger had hit the ground with mercury. The regions colored in bright red are 3 km higher than those in intense blue. Launched in 2004, Messenger accomplished more than 4,000 very elliptical orbits around the planet closest to the sun.
L’image d’astronomie du jour (Astronomy Picture Of the day – APOD)
Translation carried out by Didier Jamet
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