Annotated globe of Mercury on Google Earth

The Messenger spacecraft, launched almost 11 years ago, has been in orbit for just over 4 years.  During that time it has built a portrait of the planet's surface. You can see that map by downloading the attachment at the bottom of this post. You can also download it from the Messenger web site and find out a lot more about this mission to the planet closest to the sun. Below is an image of Mercury released today, April 1, 2015.

Caption: Mercury's hollows are among its most distinctive—and unusual—surface features. In this stunning view, we see a field of hollows in the western portion of the floor of Zeami impact basin. Hollows populate much of the rest of the basin's interior, with large concentrations several kilometers across occurring in the north and northeast parts of the floor. Individual hollows, however, can be as small as a couple of hundred meters in width. Much work continues to try to understand their nature and formation, and we'd be foolish to think this mystery solved! 

This image was acquired as a high-resolution targeted observation. Targeted observations are images of a small area on Mercury's surface at resolutions much higher than the 200-meter/pixel morphology base map. It is not possible to cover all of Mercury's surface at this high resolution, but typically several areas of high scientific interest are imaged in this mode each week. 

The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the Solar System's innermost planet. In the mission's more than three years of orbital operations, MESSENGER has acquired over 250,000 images and extensive other data sets. MESSENGER is capable of continuing orbital operations until early 2015. 


Mercury in Google earth

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

A Field of Hollows : Mercury's hollows are among its most distinctive—and unusual—surface features. In this stunning view, we see a field of hollows in the western portion of the floor of Zeami impact basin. Hollows populate much of the rest of the basin's interior, with large concentrations several kilometers across occurring in the north and northeast parts of the floor. Individual hollows, however, can be as small as a couple of hundred meters in width. Much work continues to try to understand their nature and formation, and we'd be foolish to think this mystery solved! LINK

Make sure to turn off all layers, including atmosphere which is found in the View menu of Google Earth, for best results.

Attachments:

Mercury Dataset.kmz (686 B)

On March 18, 2011, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury. More than four years later, the highly successful orbital mission is about to come to an end, as the spacecraft runs out of propellant and the force of solar gravity causes it to impact the surface of Mercury, estimated to occur between 3:25 and 3:30 p.m. EDT on April 30, 2015.



The uncertainties associated with low-minimum-altitude operations and near-zero amounts of usable spacecraft propellant introduce the potential for Mercury impact earlier in April or up to one 8.3-hour orbit later – just before midnight EDT on April 30, 2015. MESSENGER will be hidden from Earth’s view during the impact. The inability to establish communications between MESSENGER and the scheduled Earth-based tracking antenna minutes after the predicted Mercury impact time will provide a preliminary confirmation that the spacecraft mission has ended. Source  

More information

HERE is a really good tool for more complete views of Messenger imagery.

Link: Where is Mercury now?

Messenger crashed into Mercury as expected on April 30 after almost 11 years of productive science. 




Messenger's Top 10 science results

Due to the layer's creation before the addition of underwater terrain, this add-on is best viewed under the Moon or Mars. On Earth the underlying oceans will make it glitch out when zoomed in.

Jun 8, 2015 18:03:10 GMT shadowdragon said:

Due to the layer's creation before the addition of underwater terrain, this add-on is best viewed under the Moon or Mars. On Earth the underlying oceans will make it glitch out when zoomed in.

I think the best solution is turn off all layers, including atmosphere which is found in the View menu of Google Earth.

In the free version of GE there is no option to turn off terrain (they got rid of it in the last update in the free version only for some unknown reason), so while the layer is set to clamped to ground, the clamping only applies to the land, over the sea it creates this effect (layer made transparent to show) even with 0.01 terrain.


Setting it to clamped to seafloor fixes this but since this particular overlay has many images upon images such a task would take a very long time, making the Moon and Mars with everything turned off the best way to view it for those with the free version.

In the free version of GE there is no option to turn off terrain (they got rid of it in the last update in the free version only for some unknown reason), so while the layer is set to clamped to ground, the clamping only applies to the land, over the sea it creates this effect (layer made transparent to show) even with 0.01 terrain.
Now why in the ever-lovin' blue-eyed world would they do that. It makes no sense. Then again Google Maps/Earth has been making some strange decisions the last year or so.

I see your reason though. If you decide to upgrade to PRO, now free, I would suggest you download the older version 7.0.3.8542. 7.1 gives me fits just trying to download a kml/kmz.