MULTIMEDIA

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The first mission sent to orbit Mercury flew by the planet closest to the sun for the second time earlier this month, capturing images of most of its previously unseen surface. On Oct. 6, NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft, or Messenger, passed just 125 miles above Mercury and took more than 1,200 pictures of its heavily cratered surface.

During the second of three scheduled flybys, the probe used Mercury's gravity to alter its path, which will help it eventually settle into orbit around the planet in 2011. A briefing about the early scientific findings from the mission will be shown live in a NASA Television webcast Oct. 29 at 1 p.m. EDT.

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During its approach to the solar system's innermost planet, NASA's Messenger probe took this image of a crescent Mercury. The spacecraft was still an hour and a half from its closest encounter when it imaged this terrain, which hadn't been seen on Messenger's first flyby or by the Mariner 10 spacecraft, which flew by Mercury in 1974 and 1975. The image is one of a set of 11 taken through different filters to study the colors of the surface.

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