Mercury Mascons for the Cover of JGR Planets

  • Released Friday, February 6, 2015
  • Updated Wednesday, June 8, 2016 at 1:33PM
  • ID: 4258

A gravity map of Mercury shows mass concentrations (red) centered on the Caloris basin (center) and the Sobkou region (right limb).

A gravity map of Mercury shows mass concentrations (red) centered on the Caloris basin (center) and the Sobkou region (right limb).

This image appeared on the cover of the December, 2014 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. In a lengthy article in the same issue, planetary scientist Erwan Mazarico and his co-authors describe their new and improved gravity map of Mercury, named HgM005. The map is based on a careful analysis of the orbit of the MESSENGER spacecraft. It shows variations in the strength of Mercury's gravity caused by mass concentrations, or mascons — dense lumps of material beneath the surface of the planet. The analysis also led to more accurate values for Mercury's tilt and the length of its day and allowed researchers to find stable near-circular orbits that could be used by future Mercury probes.


Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio


Papers

This visualization is based on the following papers:
  • Mazarico, E., et al. (2015). The gravity field, orientation, and ephemeris of Mercury from MESSENGER observations after three years in orbit. J. Geophys. Res. Planets, 119, 2417–2436, doi:10.1002/2014JE004675.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

MESSENGER Global DTM (Collected with the MDIS sensor)
Model
MESSENGER Global Mosaic (Collected with the MDIS sensor)
Mosaic | JHUAPL
MESSENGER HgM005 (A.K.A. HgM005 Gravity Map)
Model | NASA/APL/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.


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