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An ‘added colour’ image of Mercury from the Messenger probe

NASA’s Messenger probe took a swing around Mercury on January 18, and there’s a heap of photos, videos, graphs and laser-spectral-thingy majiggys to be viewed here.

NASA hopes further analysis of its images, and the information provided by future fly-bys and orbits of Mercury by the Messenger probe will solve some of the mysteries of the Sun’s closest planet.

But here’s a more immediate mystery that requires answering : why did NASA spend hundreds of millions of dollars flinging a space vehicle into Mercury’s orbit and then release a pile of only black-and-white footage and photos? (or ’single colour’ as NASA calls black-and-white).

Doesn’t that seem kind of strange?

It sure is annoying.

UPDATE : The bizarre Mercury surface formation nicknamed ‘The Spider’ is getting scientists and space freaks very, very excited. Here’s what it looks like :

And here’s what they think it is :

…a central depression with more than 100 narrow troughs radiating from it.

…the puzzling feature is the kind of surprise that researchers live for.

The researchers wives, children and parents will be happy to know that.

The principal investigator, Sean Solomon, said: “Messenger has sent back data near perfectly, and some of it confirms earlier understandings and some of it tells us something brand new. The Spider is definitely in the category of something we never imagined we’d find.”

Again, why can’t we see this image in colour?

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