Quote:
Originally Posted by geos
I dunno I can't get too excited about Mercury. A bigger, hotter moon. Lifeless, no atmosphere, little if any geologic activity. There are more interesting places to go: Europa, Titan, Io where there are a lot more complex processes going on.
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That's part of it's appeal...we tend to overlook it. Apparently it's magnetic field is very unstable and dynamic.....so far we have no good explanation as to why it even has a magnetic field......that alone is worth investigating. Without our magnetic field....life as we know it would probably end on Earth.
We are sending a new probe to Europa...our most advanced probe ever. Io and Titan were recently investigated with follow up missions later down the road.
First Mercury images in orbit show lots of craters | Science Headlines | Comcast.net (http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-science/20110330/US.SCI.Mercury/ - broken link)
MESSENGER Web Site