THE CHALLENGE
In 2004, NASA launched the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission, a space probe that would study Mercury’s composition, geology, topography, gravity and magnetic fields, exosphere, magnetosphere, and heliospheric environment.
In order to make sure the mission was successful, NASA had to put someone in charge of the mission’s research. They found that person in Hertz Fellow Sean Solomon.
THE SOLUTION
Solomon, who is a Doherty senior scholar at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, was already well known for his research in areas in Earth and planetary science when he joined this project.
For MESSENGER, discoveries came from multiple parts of the mission. The first flyby of Mercury in 2008 led to the first new spacecraft observations of Mercury in 33 years, which led to their team publishing 11 papers in a single issue of Science. And that was just the start.
“We now know a great deal more about one of our nearest planetary neighbors than we did before.”
Sean Solomon
Doherty Senior Scholar, Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
THE IMPACT
MESSENGER’s four-year orbit around Mercury led to a treasure trove of both discoveries and images of our solar system’s planet closest to the sun. For example, MESSENGER conducted the first geochemical remote sensing of Mercury’s surface. It also revealed that Mercury had a sulfur-rich, iron-poor surface, which Solomon told Science “indicated that the planet formed from much more chemically reduced materials than those that formed the other planets and most meteorite parent bodies.”
In addition to the key scientific findings that came out of MESSENGER, Solomon said that overall successful space exploration shows that “some goals require exceptional patience and persistence,” he told Science. “We now know a great deal more about one of our nearest planetary neighbors than we did before, but the journey was long.”
