[meteorite-list] Re: Mercury Books, Websites, Map

From: Sterling K. Webb <kelly_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:50:29 2004
Message-ID: <3CC4DEC2.331DC65E_at_bhil.com>

Hi, Mark, List,

    Yes, the three Mercury flyby's were a "bonus" of Mariner 10's
mission to Venus! The Mercurian part of the mission, though an
add-on, was the "star" of the show!
    If you are near a library that keeps the old NASA
publications, I can reccommend:
    "The Voyage of Mariner 10," 1978, NASA SP-424, 221 pp. About
2/3rds of the book is Mercury photos.
    "Atlas of Mercury," 1978, NASA SP-423, 128 pp. A beautiful
piece of cartography.
    I don't know if any of the old NASA SP series is still in
print. They were available through the GPO (Government Printing
Office). I do know that a lot of valuable material from the GPO
was sold out in the 1980's and never reprinted, which is why I
suggested libraries. I'm thankful for every one of them I trudged
down to the GPO and bought, even though $8.45 (or whatever)
seemed like a lot of money in the 1970's!
    The University of Arizona's planetary series has a "Mercury"
volume, published in 1988, about 900 pp. Everything you ever
wanted to know about Mercury but were afraid to ask, at least
everything we know... This is the heaviest to wade through.
    And of course there's a section on Mercury in every book
covering the solar system...
    The water ice was discovered by radar... from Earth!
    And after 25 years, we are going back to Mercury, if we can
just keep Congress from screwing things up at the last minute.
There is a link on the MESSENGER project page that will take you
to a page with the Mariner 10 archive of photos and the USGS
shaded relief map for Mercury:
<http://www.earth.nwu.edu/people/robinson/image_archive.html>. A
lot of good stuff there.

Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------
Mark Fox wrote:

> April 22, 2002
>
> Greetings Mr. Sterling K. Webb and Fellow Meteorite
> Enthusiasts!
>
> Thank you for that monumental response to my question
> about Mercurian meteorites! I have printed out your
> post for my growing meteorite library, a habit that is
> highly recommended by numismatists as well. Imagine,
> frozen water! Amazing!
>
> But now, after reading your extensive e-mail, I have
> another question. Why aren't we sending more probes
> and the like to Mercury? It seems just as fascinating
> and mysterious as Mars--- not to mention closer too,
> during its greatest distance from Earth. My goodness,
> I even read that when Mariner 10 was flown to study
> the first two inner planets in the mid-1970's, it was
> discovered that by flying near Venus, the spacecraft
> was pulled on by that planet's gravity, thus giving it
> a little "push" as so to speak, which saved on fuel
> and time while it traveled to Mercury.
>
> Long strewn fields!
>
> Mark Fox
> Newaygo, MI USA
Received on Tue 23 Apr 2002 12:10:43 AM PDT