Messenger spacecraft :
Mercury is as cold as ice.
Indeed, Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, possesses a lot of ice - 100 billion to 1 trillion tons - scientists working with NASA's Messenger spacecraft reported on Thursday.
Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for Messenger, said there was enough ice there to encase Washington, D.C., in a frozen block 2 1/2 miles deep.
That is a counter intuitive discovery for a place that also ranks among the hottest in the solar system. At noon at the equator on Mercury, the temperature can hit 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
But near Mercury's poles, deep within craters where the sun never shines, temperatures dip to as cold as minus 370.
"In these planetary bodies, there are hidden places, as it were, that can have interesting things going on," said David J. Lawrence, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory working on the Messenger mission.
MESSENGER (an acronym of MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging) is a robotic NASA spacecraft orbiting the planet Mercury, the first spacecraft ever to do so
Mercury is as cold as ice.
Indeed, Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, possesses a lot of ice - 100 billion to 1 trillion tons - scientists working with NASA's Messenger spacecraft reported on Thursday.
Sean C. Solomon, the principal investigator for Messenger, said there was enough ice there to encase Washington, D.C., in a frozen block 2 1/2 miles deep.
That is a counter intuitive discovery for a place that also ranks among the hottest in the solar system. At noon at the equator on Mercury, the temperature can hit 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
But near Mercury's poles, deep within craters where the sun never shines, temperatures dip to as cold as minus 370.
"In these planetary bodies, there are hidden places, as it were, that can have interesting things going on," said David J. Lawrence, a senior scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory working on the Messenger mission.
Any updates about curiosity?
ReplyDeleteYa no updates about Curiosity ....
DeleteBut one thing Nasa's Curiosity Robot is nominated for Time's Magazine Best Man of the year -2012...