Hello again, Mercury. This week in a trio of papers Science, the
scientists behind the Messenger probe released their findings
from the craft’s third and final flyby of the planet closest to
the sun, which it executed last September. Mercury, they’ve
shown once again, is full of surprises—and they’ll get the
chance to explore them when Messenger returns and finally enters
Mercury’s orbit in March 2011. Scientists have now mapped 98
percent of the planet by combining the new observations with the
first two flybys in January and October 2008, plus the Mariner
10 mission in the ’70s, [said Brett Denevi, coauthor of one of
the papers]. The latest flyby filled in a 360-mile-wide gap that
had never been imaged before. “It wasn’t a huge amount of real
estate, but there was a lot of really interesting stuff there,”
Denevi said. The most exciting features include a 180-mile-wide
basin filled with hardened lava, and a crooked bowl surrounded
by glass and magma that may be the largest volcanic vent ever
identified on Me