Mercury's volcanic past revealed

A fly-by by a Nasa unmanned space probe has revealed evidence of "widespread" volcanism on the planet Mercury.

The US Mercury Messenger spacecraft made a close pass of the first planet from the Sun on 14 January.

Evidence from the Mariner 10 probe launched in the 1970s had provided only tenuous evidence for volcanic activity.

In addition, only 45% of Mercury's surface had previously been mapped; Messenger has already covered a further 30% of the planet.

"This fly-by allowed us to see a part of the planet never before viewed by spacecraft, and our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data," said Dr Sean Solomon, Messenger's chief scientist.

On the evidence for volcanism, mission scientist Louise Prockter, from the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, said: "I think there's little doubt on the part of our team that there has been widespread volcanism on Mercury."



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7218575.stm