NASA’s Messenger Mission which is sent to the space to study and understand Mercury which is the smallest, densest and least-explored planet. It has finally unveiled the first global digital elevation model (DEM) of Mercury. It has revealed the stunning detail of topography across the entire innermost planet.

It will also surface or cover the way for scientists to fully characterize Mercury’s geologic history.

“The wealth of these data has already enabled and will continue to enable exciting scientific discoveries about Mercury for decades to come,” said a software engineer at The Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

The video below reveals a variety of interesting topographic features. The highest and lowest points on the planet are also shown. The highest elevation on Mercury is at 4.48 km above Mercury’s average elevation, located just south of the equator in some of Mercury’s oldest terrain. The lowest elevation, at 5.38 km below Mercury’s average, is found on the floor of Rachmaninoff basin.

This new model was created by over 100,000 images. “During its four years of orbital observations, Messenger revealed the global characteristics of one of our closest planetary neighbors for the first time. The data from the mission will continue to be utilized by the planetary science community for years to come.