{"id":1938,"date":"2012-11-29T23:03:06","date_gmt":"2012-11-30T04:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/?p=1938"},"modified":"2013-06-18T14:33:05","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T18:33:05","slug":"nasa-news-mercury-water-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/nasa-news-mercury-water-ice\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA news: Mercury water ice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>NASA held a news conference<\/a> today, unveiling new evidence for water ice<\/a> at Mercury’s polar regions from the MESSENGER spacecraft.<\/p>\n

MESSENGER is an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging. Powered by two solar panels, it was launched August 3, 2004, reaching Mercury’s orbit March 18, 2011 (UTC).<\/p>\n

Mercury has a temperature range of 610 degrees Celsius:\u00a0427 degrees on the side closest to the Sun, and -183 degrees on the night side. There are crater floors around Mercury\u2019s poles that are in persistent shade, since its rotation axis does not tilt. NASA’s latest data points to water ice and other frozen deposits in these craters.<\/p>\n

The red areas in this image are the permanently shadowed craters of Mercury’s north pole, with the polar deposits in yellow.<\/p>\n

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Image: NASA\/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory\/Carnegie Institution of Washington\/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA held a news conference today, unveiling new evidence for water ice at Mercury’s polar regions from the MESSENGER spacecraft. MESSENGER is an acronym for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging. Powered by two solar panels, it was launched … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,73,65],"class_list":["post-1938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-mercury","tag-nasa","tag-planets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1938"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3173,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions\/3173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}