Mercury

Mercury has always held the distinction of being the terrestrial planet most unlike the others. On 18 March 2011, after three successful flybys of Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury. Essential to the payload of MESSENGER are three instruments designed to measure the geochemistry of the surface - an x-ray spectrometer, a gamma-ray spectrometer, and a neutron spectrometer. Together, the data returned by these three instruments - coupled with insights about planetary structure gained from tracking the spacecraft, spectral data measured in orbit, and a new and complete view of the geology of the surface - have begun to revolutionize the people's understanding of Mercury. In this chapter, the authors first review the pre-MESSENGER views of Mercury, followed by the first results from the MESSENGER mission. The authors then discuss the implications of these first results in constraining the origin of Mercury, followed by looking forward to future work.