Bullethead
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The 4 July issue of Science magazine has many papers on observations made by the MESSENGER spacecraft during its 1st pass by Mercury back in January. It's pretty interesting stuff, although rather disappointing in a personal sense.
Mercury still seems to be about 60% iron by weight, but none of it to speak of is anywhere near the surface. The surface seems to all be either feldspar or bassaltic lava flows, neither of which has more than a trace of iron mixed in with it. So, no iron in the crust, no iron in the mantle--it must all be in the core.
I find this disappointing. I was rather fond of the old depictions of Mercury with rivers of molten iron, and sci-fi stories of mining colonies there. And even though the old Mariner photos didn't show any such rivers, you could always hope that they just lacked the resolution, or that molten rivers existed in the large part of the planet Mariner didn't see. Oh well.
Anyway, it'll apparently be another couple of years before MESSENGER settles down into a low circular orbit at Mercury. In the meantime, I think it'll be making eccentric passes through the trailing parts of the magnetosphere. That'll be interesting, but we'll have to wait on full surface maps to make high-res textures from.
Mercury still seems to be about 60% iron by weight, but none of it to speak of is anywhere near the surface. The surface seems to all be either feldspar or bassaltic lava flows, neither of which has more than a trace of iron mixed in with it. So, no iron in the crust, no iron in the mantle--it must all be in the core.
I find this disappointing. I was rather fond of the old depictions of Mercury with rivers of molten iron, and sci-fi stories of mining colonies there. And even though the old Mariner photos didn't show any such rivers, you could always hope that they just lacked the resolution, or that molten rivers existed in the large part of the planet Mariner didn't see. Oh well.
Anyway, it'll apparently be another couple of years before MESSENGER settles down into a low circular orbit at Mercury. In the meantime, I think it'll be making eccentric passes through the trailing parts of the magnetosphere. That'll be interesting, but we'll have to wait on full surface maps to make high-res textures from.
