This image from MESSENGER's orbit around Mercury shows the pit-
floor crater Beckett. Beckett is a 53-km diameter impact crater
that was viewed during MESSENGER's first flyby of the planet,
and an image collected then revealed the curved pit on Beckett's
floor. The new image shown here has higher spatial resolution,
allowing finer details of the pit's interior to be discerned.
This image was acquired as part of MDIS's high-resolution
surface morphology base map. The surface morphology base map
will cover more than 90% of Mercury's surface with an average
resolution of 250 meters/pixel (0.16 miles/pixel or 820
feet/pixel). Images acquired for the surface morphology base map
typically have off-vertical Sun angles (i.e., high incidence
angles) and visible shadows so as to reveal clearly the
topographic form of geologic features. The MESSENGER spacecraft
is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the
spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science
investigation are unraveling the history and ev