Space probe blasts off to Mercury

Watch the launch

The Mercury Messenger probe has launched successfully on its mission to carry out a detailed investigation of the first planet from the Sun.

The spacecraft blasted off just before 0616 GMT on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral in Florida, US, aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket for a seven-year journey.

It is the first US mission to Mercury for more than 30 years.

After arriving in 2011, the probe will orbit Mercury for a year to explore its atmosphere, composition and structure.

A scheduled lift-off on Monday had to be scrubbed due to thick clouds. The poor weather is understood to have been due to residual effects of tropical storm Alex.

During its 7.9bn km voyage it will also make one flyby of Earth, two of Venus and three of Mercury before slipping into orbit around the Solar System's innermost planet.

The probe will gather information on the composition and structure of Mercury's crust, its geological history, polar regions, atmosphere and magnetic environment as well as the make-up of its core.

Mercurial world

Scientists hope the $427m mission will help solve some of the mysteries surrounding this enigmatic world.

Mercury is probably the least explored of the so-called rocky planets that also include Venus, Earth and Mars.

In 1973, Nasa launched the Mariner 10 spacecraft which flew by the planet three times, but was only able to photograph 45% of its surface.

Astronomers already know that Mercury - which has a comparable density to Earth even though it is much smaller - is about two-thirds iron. But why it became so much richer in this metal than the other inner planets is unknown.

Some scientists think the planet may once have been rocky but lost its exterior, perhaps through exposure to solar winds or through some giant impact.

Sean Solomon, principal scientist for the mission, said he also wanted to understand why the Solar System's inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are so different from its outer planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

For this it was important "to study the most extreme of those outcomes, and that's Mercury," Dr Solomon explained.

Mercury is also the only inner planet besides Earth with a global magnetic field. Scientists hope to learn how this formed.

Fire and ice

One of the most intriguing mysteries about Mercury, however, is the apparent presence of ice on its surface.

On a planet where surface temperatures at the equator can reach 450C (about 840F), any ice must stay out of the Sun, inside the shadowy interior of craters at the poles.

Radio telescopes on Earth have detected the signature of ice in craters at some shaded, high latitude regions, where the temperature could remain below -184C (-300F).

But some scientists caution that the "ice" could actually be super-frozen silica or something else.

THE PLANET MERCURY