PIA18148: MESSENGER Departing Earth (Artist's Concept)
Artist's impression of NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft as it leaves Earth, following its Aug. 3, 2004 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. aboard a Delta II rocket.
 Target Name:  Mercury
 Mission:  MESSENGER 
 Spacecraft:  MESSENGER
 Product Size:  1800 x 1626 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Johns Hopkins University/APL 
 Other  
Information: 		 More artist's impressions from MESSENGER 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA18148.tif (8.784 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA18148.jpg (289.5 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Artist's impression of the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft as it leaves Earth, following its Aug. 3, 2004 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. aboard a Delta II rocket. The spacecraft will fly past Earth once, Venus twice and Mercury three times before starting a yearlong orbital study of the innermost planet in March 2011.

For information regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.

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

Image Addition Date:
2004-08-03