MESSENGER Scientist Strom, Veteran of Mariner 10, to Talk About Mercury
Robert Strom is the only scientist to serve on the science teams for two missions to Mercury, Mariner 10 and MESSENGER.
This kidney-shaped volcanic vent surrounded by a bright halo of volcanic ash lies in a large impact crater called Caloris Basin on Mercury. Not too many people have yet seen this MESSENGER image. It's one of Strom's favorites. (NASA/JHUAPL/CIW)
Strom is the only scientist who has served on both Mercury missions.
No one knows the planet Mercury the way University of Arizona professor emeritus Bob Strom does.
Strom is the only member of NASA's Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s who serves on the space agency's MESSENGER mission, the first spacecraft ever sent to orbit the planet closest to our sun. MESSENGER is the acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging. During the 30-year hiatus between space missions to Mercury, Strom, who is 74, wrote two books about the unique and mysterious planet.
When the MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of Mercury on Jan. 14, Strom studied its 1,200 new images and other high-tech observations alongside graduate students 50 years his junior. These data were the first up-close measurements of Mercury made since the Mariner 10 spacecraft's third and final flyby on March 16, 1975.
"When we got our first look at the high-resolution pictures, I was shocked," Strom told a reporter from The Baltimore Sun who was covering the January event from the mission's science operations center at Johns Hopkins University, near Laurel, Md. "The quality was unbelievable, so much better than Mariner 10," Strom told the Sun. "It's like a new planet. We're going to have to go back and look at the entire planet all over again."
Strom will present some of the new Mercury images and preliminary results in his talk, titled "Mercury and the MESSENGER Mission," for the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory Evening Lecture Series on Tuesday, March 25. The lecture begins at 7:30 p.m. in Room 308 of the Kuiper Space Sciences Building, 1629 E. University Blvd. The lecture is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Among the most compelling results from MESSENGER's first flyby are images that show evidence of volcanism, and different styles of volcanism never seen before, and tectonics like no other planet in the solar system. "Mercury has these enormous stress faults all over the place, features we don't see anywhere else in the solar system," Strom said. He will talk on what has possibly caused these on Mercury but no other planet.
Strom, who is officially retired, says he now works harder than he did when he was fully employed. He'll be immersed in science with the rest of the team when MESSENGER makes its second flyby in October 2008, again in September 2009, and finally settles into orbit around the planet in 2011.
