Tomorrow!  Tomorrow NASA will release the first images from MESSENGER’s orbit insertion.  I’ll certainly be watching for them.  Here’s the NASA news notice:

NASA will release the first orbital image of Mercury’s surface, including previously unseen terrain, on Tuesday afternoon, March 29. Several other images will be available Wednesday, March 30 in conjunction with a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT to discuss these initial orbital images taken from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging, or MESSENGER, entered orbit March 17 after completing more than a dozen laps within the inner solar system during the past 6.6 years.

Media teleconference participants are:
– Sean Solomon, MESSENGER principal investigator, Carnegie Institution of Washington
– Eric Finnegan, MESSENGER mission systems engineer, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel. Md.

To participate in the teleconference, reporters must contact Dwayne Brown at dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov or 202-358-1726 for dial-in instructions.

During the teleconference, MESSENGER information and images will be available at http://www.nasa.gov/messenger.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA’s website at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.