MESSENGER: NASA’s Mission to Mercury

Circle the innermost planet aboard MESSENGER, the first mission to orbit Mercury. This app brings you inside NASA’s history-making study of Mercury – the first images of the entire planet, along with the detailed data on Mercury’s surface, geologic history, thin atmosphere and active magnetosphere that MESSENGER sends back every day. Get a detailed look at the MESSENGER spacecraft and its science instruments, browse the latest news and pictures, or trace the spacecraft’s path over Mercury as it scans the scorched surface of the Sun’s closest planetary neighbor. Can you take the heat?

Main Features Include:

News
Get up-to-the-minute reports from the MESSENGER Web News Center and Twitter feed.

Media
Have the “Mercury Image of the Day” sent straight to your device; flip through hundreds of stunning pictures of Mercury taken by the spacecraft’s cameras; watch videos that trace MESSENGER’s 4.9-billion mile journey to Mercury that included six planetary flybys and 15 trips around the Sun.

Information
Tour the robust MESSENGER spacecraft and science payload; see what MESSENGER was designed to learn about Mercury; pick up some quick facts about the mission and its planetary target.

Tools
Follow MESSENGER as it loops around Mercury; pinpoint its location over the surface; see how much time remains in its current, 8-hour orbit.

Education (iPad only)
Use the interactive QuickMap to view areas on Mercury observed or targeted for hi-res observation by MESSENGER instruments, locate craters and other “named” surface features, and explore detailed global and regional images.