MESSENGER Team Presents Latest Mercury Findings at AGU Fall Meeting

Members of the MESSENGER team will present a broad range of findings from the spacecraft’s orbital investigation of Mercury during the 2011 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), which takes place this week, December 5-9, in San Francisco. In 63 oral and poster presentations spanning 13 technical sessions, team scientists will report on the analysis and interpretation of observations made by MESSENGER’s instruments since the spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury in March 2011.

The majority of the MESSENGER papers will be given in three special sessions on December 8. Those papers will report new findings on the topography and gravity field of Mercury’s northern hemisphere, Mercury’s internal structure and dynamics, the elemental composition of Mercury’s surface, the variation of Mercury’s surface spectral reflectance, Mercury’s distinctive hollows, plains volcanism on Mercury, characteristics of impact craters on Mercury, deformation of Mercury’s surface, Mercury’s internal magnetic field, the structure and variability of Mercury’s exosphere, the structure and dynamics of Mercury’s magnetosphere, energetic particles and plasma ions in Mercury’s vicinity, and Mercury’s interplanetary environment.

MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon will also deliver AGU’s Shoemaker Lecture to provide an overview of all that’s been discovered about the innermost planet.

Many of these presentations will be available by video on demand. To view the sessions, visit the AGU Fall Meeting web page at http://sites.agu.org/fallmeeting/scientific-program/sessions-on-demand/ and click on the appropriate session at the scheduled time (Pacific time).