Magnesium detected in MESSENGER flyby of Mercury (w/Video)
Thursday, April 30, 2009 - 14:21
in Astronomy & Space
NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft served up another curveball to a University of Colorado at Boulder team after a second flyby of the hot inner planet Oct. 6 detected magnesium -- an element created inside exploding stars and which is found in many medicine cabinets on Earth -- clumped in the tenuous atmosphere of the planet.