MESSENGER found water ice on Mercury

When it comes to Mercury, most of it is like burning a small planetoid, the surface of which can be seen from the lake of molten metal. Perhaps this view contributed to science fiction writers, not just Mercury describes how scorched subsidiaries firebrand, where almost nothing, and that is - melts or burns.

Actually, all the above applies only to the part that faces the sun, on the "night" side of the temperature drops to a negative value of minus 180 degrees Celsius.

Low temperatures typical for craters where the sun never peeks. It was decided to explore the craters using cameras probe Messenger, which for several years helps to study Mercury.

Thus, since 2012, scientists get the picture shadowed craters in the polar regions of the first planet of the solar system. Get some information about what is at the bottom of craters, managed through scattered radiation inside the crater.



Best get to inspect the crater Prokofiev (yes, in honor of the composer Prokofiev this crater got its name). Studying images using a special algorithm has shown that on the bottom - a material with high albedo characteristic of water ice. It turned out that in other craters of Mercury have ice, but there it is covered with bloom, presumably from a material with lots of organic matter.

Now scientists need to figure out how old ice deposits - whether there was water on Mercury billions of years ago, or more recently, in geological time.



Also interesting that the results suggest the presence of ice on Mercury were obtained in the 90s of last century. Then the surface of the planet was examined using the 70-meter radio telescope antenna Goldstone. In the polar regions of the planet reflected radio waves is much better than in other places. Now scientists have confirmed the hunch.

Oh, and as a bonus - a stereoscopic image of the crater Lermontov.



Via + NASA

Source: geektimes.ru/post/240416/