[Tuesday, January 8, 2008] NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST on Thursday, Jan. 10, to preview the historic Jan. 14 spacecraft flight past Mercury that will explore some of the last major never-seen-before terrain in the inner solar system.

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[Tuesday, January 8, 2008] MESSENGER's mid-December trajectory correction maneuver (TCM-19) went so well that the mission design and navigation teams have decided that a TCM scheduled for January 10 will not be needed.

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[Wednesday, January 9, 2008] MESSENGER mission operators at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., have received the first eight optical navigation images from the spacecraft.

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[Thursday, January 10, 2008] NASA will return to Mercury for the first time in almost 33 years on January 14, 2008, when the MESSENGER spacecraft makes its first flyby of the Sun's closest neighbor, capturing images of large portions of the planet never before seen.

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[Saturday, January 12, 2008] At 8 a.m. EST on January 13  30 hours before the closest approach to Mercury  the spacecraft will turn its main antennas away from Earth and automatically begin executing the 5,000 on-board stored commands.

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[Saturday, January 12, 2008] With just two days until MESSENGER's closest pass by Mercury, the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) is acquiring sets of images twice a day.

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[Sunday, January 13, 2008] With just one day until MESSENGER's historic flyby of Mercury, MESSENGER has Mercury clearly in its sights. The Narrow Angle Camera, part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), took this image on January 12, 2008

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[Monday, January 14, 2008] Today, at 19:04:39 UTC (2:04:39 pm EST), MESSENGER will fly 200 kilometers (124 miles) above Mercury’s surface.

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[Tuesday, January 15, 2008] At 16:30 UTC (11:30 a.m. EST) today, MESSENGER flight controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., received the first telemetry from the spacecraft following the probe's closest approach to Mercury yesterday.

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[Tuesday, January 15, 2008] Like the previously mapped portion of Mercury, this hemisphere appears heavily cratered. It also reveals some unique and distinctive features. On the upper right is the giant Caloris basin, including its western portions never before seen by spacecraft.

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[Thursday, January 17, 2008] Just 21 minutes after MESSENGERs closest approach to Mercury on January 14, 2008, the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) took images showing a variety of intriguing surface features.

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[Thursday, January 17, 2008] Shortly following MESSENGER's closest approach to Mercury on January 14, 2008, the spacecraft's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) instrument acquired these images.

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[Friday, January 18, 2008] A day after its successful flyby of Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft turned toward Earth on Tuesday and began downloading the 500 megabytes of data that had been stored on the solid-state recorder during the encounter.

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[Saturday, January 19, 2008] This image shows Mercury's surface as seen from a low viewing angle, looking over the surface and off the limb of the planet on the right side of the image.

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[Sunday, January 20, 2008] The European Space Agency (ESA) signalled the start of a busy period for the planet Mercury, when it signed the contract for industrial development to start for the BepiColombo mission.

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[Sunday, January 20, 2008] MESSENGER team members are examining closely the more than 1,200 images returned from this flyby for other surface features that can provide clues to the geological history of the innermost planet.

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[Monday, January 21, 2008] One week ago, on January 14, 2008, MESSENGER passed 200 kilometers (124 miles) above the surface of Mercury and snapped the first pictures of a side of Mercury not previously seen by a spacecraft.

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[Wednesday, January 23, 2008] This color image was generated by combining three separate images taken through WAC filters sensitive to light in different wavelengths

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[Thursday, January 24, 2008] One of many investigations underway includes identifying and measuring the impact craters on these previously unseen regions.

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[Saturday, January 26, 2008] During MESSENGERs flyby of Mercury on January 14, 2008, part of the planned sequence of observations included taking images of the same portion of Mercurys surface from five different viewing angles.

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[Saturday, January 26, 2008] As MESSENGER sped by Mercury on January 14, 2008, the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) captured this shot looking toward Mercury's north pole

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[Sunday, January 27, 2008] As the MESSENGER team continues to study the high-resolution images taken during the Mercury flyby encounter on January 14, 2008, scarps (cliffs) that extend for long distances are discovered.

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[Sunday, January 27, 2008] As the MESSENGER team continues to study the high-resolution images taken during the Mercury flyby encounter on January 14, 2008, scarps (cliffs) that extend for long distances are discovered.

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[Monday, January 28, 2008] Two weeks ago, on January 14, 2008, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to see the side of Mercury shown in this image.

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[Monday, January 28, 2008] NASA will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 30, to announce scientific findings and release never-before-seen images of Mercury.

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[Tuesday, January 29, 2008] After MESSENGER completed its successful flyby of Mercury, the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC), part of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS), took images of the receding planet.

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[Wednesday, January 30, 2008] "MESSENGER has shown that Mercury is even more different from the Moon than we'd thought," said Science Team Co-Investigator James Head, professor at Brown University and chair of the mission's Geology Discipline Group.

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