Dr. Paul Byrne | Assistant Professor | Dept. of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences | NC State University

Abstract: Until 2008 Mercury was a poorly understood planet, with less than half of it imaged by visiting spacecraft. NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury returned global image and topographic data and – together with gravity, spectral, and compositional data – has dramatically increased our understanding of this enigmatic world. In this presentation, Paul Byrne will describe how these data, integrated in GIS environments, has enabled our study of the geological, geophysical, and geochemical character of Mercury.