NASA Releases First Photos from Mercury Orbiter

It turns out the planet looks a lot like the moon.

It is a photograph seven years in the making. The unmanned Messenger probe was launched in 2004, and earlier this month completed its 7.9-million-km journey to become the first spacecraft to enter orbit around Mercury. Wednesday, NASA released the first of some 75,000 images of the planet that Messenger will collect over its one-year reconnaissance mission. From the photo, Mercury looks startlingly familiar. While Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and temperatures on its surface can reach 427 degrees Celsius, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the photo for an image of the cold surface of the Earth's moon. The photo shows Mercury's cratered grey surface and depicts a region of the planet that scientists have never observed before.