Just to give you an idea about how fast NASA's Messenger space probe is traveling, on Sunday it was almost half a million miles away from the planet Mercury - twice the distance from earth to the moon. By yesterday the probe made its closest approach to the planet yet at just 124 miles above the Mercurian surface before sailing off to loop around the sun.

The swift little probe will have to bleed off most of this velocity in two more giant loops in order to be captured into orbit around Mercury by 2011 when it is scheduled to begin its survey mission.

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"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
--PKD

Only 124 miles!! In astronomical terms, that is more than a near miss!

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

Yeah, traveling inward (towards the sun) is like running downhill, you tend to gain a lot of speed.

BTW, here is one of the first detailed images of Mercury, taken by the MESSENGER spacecraft.

This image was taken from a distance of 3,600 miles from surface of the planet and shows a region approximately 100 miles across. Craters as small as 300 yards across can be seen.

Very cool!!! Nice image!

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

Interesting.....there seems to be some large fractures running through the surface.

I noticed those. Ancient seismic activity? Or just old scars from VERY big hits or glancing blows?

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"Too Soon from the Cave, Too Far from the Stars"

Mercury does have an iron core and generates a magnetic field, that would point to a liquid core, so its possible to have seismic activity I would guess.