Mercury

About this book

Observations from the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury have transformed our understanding of the origin and evolution of rocky planets. This volume is the definitive resource about Mercury for planetary scientists, from students to senior researchers. Topics treated in depth include Mercury's chemical composition; the structure of its crust, lithosphere, mantle, and core; Mercury's modern and ancient magnetic field; Mercury's geology, including the planet's major geological units and their surface chemistry and mineralogy, its spectral reflectance characteristics, its craters and cratering history, its tectonic features and deformational history, its volcanic features and magmatic history, its distinctive hollows, and the frozen ices in its polar deposits; Mercury's exosphere and magnetosphere and the processes that govern their dynamics and their interaction with the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field; the formation and large-scale evolution of the planet; and current plans and needed capabilities to explore Mercury further in the future. -publisher

Themes & subjects

About the author

Brian J. Anderson

19--

Brian J. Anderson, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland Brian J. Anderson is a Principal Professional Staff Physicist at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Maryland, having served earlier as Magnetospheric Section supervisor and Space Physics Group supervisor. For MESSENGER he was Magnetometer Instrument Scientist from 1999 to 2009 and Deputy Project Scientist from 2007 to 2017 while also serving as a Co-Investigator from 2009 to 2017. He was spacecraft magnetics lead and is on the science team of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission. He is the Principal Investigator of the National Science Foundation's Active Magnetosphere and …