[meteorite-list] Eleventh MESSENGER Planetary Data System Release Is the Largest Yet

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2014 13:31:40 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201403072131.s27LVeYc015749_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=253

MESSENGER Mission News
March 7, 2014

Eleventh MESSENGER Planetary Data System Release Is the Largest Yet

NASA requires that all of its planetary missions archive their data in
the PDS, which provides well-documented, peer-reviewed data to the
research community. The latest release of MESSENGER measurements
includes raw and calibrated products created from data acquired through
September 17, 2013, and advanced products created from data acquired
through March 17, 2013.

"Delivery 11 has the largest volume of data -- over three terabytes --
in a single MESSENGER delivery to date," notes MESSENGER's Science
Operations Center lead Susan Ensor, of the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). "The size of MESSENGER's deliveries
will continue to grow as we add new products, continue to archive
extended mission orbital data, and deliver final products at the end of
the mission."

This release includes new raw and calibrated data products from the
Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) anti-coincidence shield acquired after an
update to the GRS instrument flight software. The update followed the
failure in June 2012 of the cryogenic cooler for the germanium detector.
With that failure, the GRS could no longer acquire gamma-ray spectra, so
the shield was repurposed as a neutron and electron detector. The new
products in this delivery include improved neutron spectra from the
shield and new high-time-cadence measurements designed to characterize
energetic electron events at unprecedented time resolution.

This release includes a new global, three-color map produced with images
acquired by MESSENGER's Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), and, for the
first time, image backplanes with latitude and longitude, as well as
incidence, emission, and phase angles.

"The global color maps of Mercury are intended to provide a uniform view
of the planet's surface, so differences in lithology and stratigraphy
can be analyzed easily," said APL's Mary Keller, a remote sensing
scientist on the MESSENGER team. "The three-color map uses a subset of
the bands that were combined into the eight-color map and provides a
higher-resolution view of surface features for comparison."

Also now available are reflectance spectra and a 750-nm base map derived
from data from the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition
Spectrometer (MASCS) Visible and Infrared Spectrograph (VIRS), and an
exosphere model derived from the MASCS Ultraviolet and Visible
Spectrometer (UVVS).

"VIRS captures many wavelengths of light from a single spot on the
surface at a time, creating a spectral profile of the surface as
MESSENGER orbits Mercury," explains APL's Noam Izenberg, the MASCS
Instrument Scientist. "The VIRS sensor on MASCS has accumulated several
million individual spectra, enough that the reflectance of the surface
can be interpolated to reveal surface brightness details similar to
those seen in the MDIS base map. Both of these instruments probe the
spectral 'fingerprint' of rocks on Mercury's surface in different ways,
enabling scientists to map the compositional and physical variations of
surface rocks by observing how light interacts with them."

An improved-resolution digital elevation model for Mercury's northern
hemisphere has also been made available in this release. "The newest
Mercury Laser Altimeter digital elevation model now includes full
coverage of the north polar region, an important milestone for the
mission," says APL's Carolyn Ernst, the instrument sequencer for MLA.
"Additionally, this product has substantially higher spatial resolution
(500 meters per pixel) than those previously delivered to the PDS and
reveals incredible detail, including wrinkle ridges, ghost craters,
central peaks, and crater chains."

The ACT-REACT QuickMap interactive Web interface to MESSENGER data has
been updated to incorporate the full coverage of the MDIS and MASCS VIRS
orbital data included in this release. QuickMap can be accessed via
links on the MESSENGER websites at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/ and
http://www.nasa.gov/messenger. The MDIS mosaics can be downloaded from
http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/the_mission/mosaics.html.

The data for this release are available online at
http://pds.nasa.gov/subscription_service/SS-20140307.html, and all of
the MESSENGER data archived at the PDS are available at
http://pds.nasa.gov. The team will deliver the next mission data set for
release by PDS in September.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
entered orbit about Mercury on March 17, 2011 (March 18, 2011 UTC), to
begin a yearlong study of its target planet. MESSENGER's first extended
mission began on March 18, 2012, and ended one year later. MESSENGER is
now in a second extended mission, which is scheduled to conclude in
March 2015. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, the Director of Columbia University's
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, 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.
Received on Fri 07 Mar 2014 04:31:40 PM PST