MESSENGER Team Delivers Mercury Flyby 1 Data to Planetary Data System

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=101

MESSENGER Mission News
August 4, 2008

Sharing the Wealth: MESSENGER Team Delivers Mercury Flyby 1 Data to
Planetary Data System

Data from MESSENGER's first flyby of Mercury have been released to the
public by the Planetary Data System (PDS), an organization that
archives
and distributes all of NASA's planetary mission data.

"This delivery, while not the first for the MESSENGER mission,
represents a significant milestone,' says MESSENGER Mission Archive
Coordinator Alan Mick, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory. "We had delivered data from MESSENGER to the PDS before,
but
not Mercury data," he says. "This delivery was particularly
significant
- the first MESSENGER flyby of Mercury was mankind's return to this
planet after an absence of over three decades. In this one flyby we
imaged previously unseen areas of Mercury's surface, greatly improved
the resolution in areas already covered, and made observations of a
kind
that had never been made before."

Calibrated data from three of the probe's science instruments - the
Magnetometer (MAG), the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition
Spectrometer (MASCS), and the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) - are
included in this release. "The science results from these instruments
have already shed light on questions about Mercury that have lingered
for more than three decades," says MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph
McNutt of APL.

For instance, analyses of data from MDIS have shown that volcanoes
were
involved in plains formation, and MAG results confirm that the
planet's
magnetic field is actively produced in the planet's core and is not a
frozen relic. The MASCS instrument has provided new insights into the
extent and complexity of the planet's tenuous exosphere. "The
availability of these data via PDS will allow scientists around the
world to study the data and begin making even more connections and
discoveries," McNutt adds.

Since the mid-1990s, NASA has required all of its planetary missions
to
archive data in the PDS, an active archive that makes available
well-documented, peer-reviewed data to the research community. "An
essential element of the implementation of NASA missions is the
dissemination of collected data to the science community at large,"
explains Marilyn Lindstrom, NASA Program Scientist for MESSENGER.
"It's
critical to maintain a planetary data archive that will withstand the
test of time so that future generations of scientists can access,
understand, and use pre-existing planetary data."

The PDS includes eight university/research center science teams,
called
discipline nodes, each of which specializes in specific areas of
planetary data. The contributions from these nodes provide a data-rich
source for scientists, researchers, and developers. Steven Joy of the
University of California, Los Angeles, is MESSENGER's PDS liaison. His
challenge was to coordinate the efforts of the nodes responsible for
validating the various datasets before they could be released. "The
PDS
validation process needs to be comprehensive and unforgiving to ensure
that only high-quality, well-documented data are released for use by
the
science community," Joy says. "The data archives do not need to be
perfect, but they do need to be documented well enough that future
users, unfamiliar with how the data were acquired, can understand the
data and apply them to new problems."

The "formal" public release makes mission data available for several
applications, including the MESSENGER Mercury flyby visualization
tool,
available online at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/encountersactual/.
"The
tool now includes actual, unprocessed images from the narrow-angle and
wide-angle cameras, taken during the January flyby," says APL's James
McAdams, who designed MESSENGER's trajectory. "Viewers will see the
same
images that told the team that the cameras were not only on target,
but
were revealing Mercury as it had never been seen before."

In addition, the "Science on a Sphere" exhibit at NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center's Visitor Center has now incorporated MESSENGER images
into its collection of Solar System displays. This exhibit utilizes
four
video projectors to display three-dimensional data onto the surface of
a
six-foot, suspended sphere. "It's a unique opportunity to project
high-resolution NASA data for educational purposes," notes MESSENGER
Education and Public Outreach Project Manager Stephanie Stockman.

MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon says it took high level
of
dedication for the team to pull this off. "Many members of the
MESSENGER
team devoted long hours and weekends to ensure that the project met
the
goal of releasing all of our Mercury data six months after the flyby.
We
are delighted to share these historic data with the scientific
community
and the public, and we hope that their availability will foster
interest
everywhere in the mysteries of the Sun's closest planetary neighbor."

________________________________________

Happy Anniversary, MESSENGER!

It's been four years since MESSENGER was launched atop a Delta II
rocket
on August 3, 2004, and they have been busy years. Since it began its
odyssey, the spacecraft has travelled 4.33 billion kilometers (2.69
billion miles) relative to the Sun. It has executed four planetary
flybys (one of Earth on August 2, 2005; two of Venus, on October 24,
2006, and June 5, 2007; and one of Mercury, on January 14, 2008),
three
deep-space propulsive maneuvers, and 15 smaller trajectory-correction
maneuvers. Up next are two more passes by Mercury (October 6, 2008,
and
September 29, 2009) and then on March 18, 2011, MESSENGER will become
the first spacecraft to enter into orbit around the innermost planet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and
Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet
Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet
closest
to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and
after flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury will start a yearlong study
of
its target planet in March 2011. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, leads the mission as principal
investigator.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and
operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery -class
mission for NASA.
.

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