This November 1996 image from Magellan shows Dickinson, an impact crater in the northeastern Atalanta region of Venus. The image is approximately 115 miles (185 kilometers) wide at the base and 43 miles (69 kilometers) in diameter. The crater is complex, characterized by a partial central ring and a floor flooded by radar-dark and radar-bright materials. Hummocky, rough-textured ejecta extend all around the crater, except to the west. The lack of ejecta to the west may indicate that the impactor that produced the crater was an oblique impact from the west. Extensive radar-bright flows that emanate from the crater’s eastern walls may represent large volumes of impact melt, or they may be the result of volcanic material released from the subsurface during the cratering event.

Magellan was the first planetary spacecraft launched from a space shuttle. Now the agency is planning an even more adventurous mission–DAVINCI, which will be the first mission to study Venus using both spacecraft flybys and a descent probe.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

這張麥哲倫于1996年11月拍攝的照片顯示了狄金森隕石坑，它位于金星亞特蘭大地區(qū)東北部。這張照片底部寬約115英里（185公里），直徑43英里（69公里）。這個(gè)隕石坑很復(fù)雜，其特征是有一個(gè)部分的中心環(huán)和一個(gè)被雷達(dá)黑暗和雷達(dá)明亮材料淹沒(méi)的地面。除了向西外，坑坑洼洼、粗糙的噴出物遍布隕石坑周圍。西面沒(méi)有噴出物可能表明，形成隕石坑的撞擊物是來(lái)自西面的斜向撞擊。從隕石坑?xùn)|壁發(fā)出的大量雷達(dá)般明亮流可能代表著大量的撞擊熔體，或者它們可能是隕石坑活動(dòng)期間地下火山物質(zhì)釋放的結(jié)果。

麥哲倫是第一個(gè)從航天飛機(jī)上發(fā)射的行星航天器?，F(xiàn)在，NASA正在計(jì)劃一項(xiàng)更具冒險(xiǎn)性的任務(wù)——達(dá)芬奇，這將是第一個(gè)同時(shí)使用航天器飛越和降落探測(cè)器來(lái)研究金星的任務(wù)。