MESSENGER Mercury Orbiter 3D Model

MESSENGER, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, which arrived in 2011 after a path through the inner solar system with one flyby of Earth, two of Venus and three of Mercury. The model shows the large white curved sunshade, the gold body with thruster nozzles on top, two square solar panels striped with cells, and the long magnetometer boom.

Technical details: about 12,000 polygons and 11,000 vertices, UV-mapped, with 10 materials and 9 texture maps. That is very light, good for real-time scenes, web viewers and mobile. It is scaled to 5 metres for AiZity's catalogue scale.

The download includes GLB for web viewers and three.js, FBX for Unity, Unreal Engine and Maya, OBJ as a widely supported mesh, and BLEND for Blender. Textures come in a separate folder. AiZity cleaned up the original (centred, grounded and renamed the parts) and converted it to these formats.

Good for Mercury and inner solar system lessons, planetary mission animations, gravity-assist explainers and space game assets.

License: Public domain, made by NASA (a U.S. government work). Free for personal and commercial use; please credit NASA. NASA logos and insignia are not included, and use must not suggest NASA endorsement.