Profile:
Mass: 330,104,000,000,000 billion kg (0.055 x Earth)
Equatorial Diameter: 4,879
Polar Diameter: 4,879
Equatorial Circumference: 15,329 km
Known Moons: none
Notable Moons: none
Orbit Distance: 57,909,227 km (0.39 x Earth's Distance to the Sun)
Orbit Period: 87.97 Earth days
Surface Temperature: -173 to 427°C
Missions:
• BepiColombo (2017)
Europe's first mission to Mercury
• MESSENGER (2004)
NASA Orbiter to Mercury
• Mariner 10 (1973)
ASA Flyby Mission to Venus and Mercury
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and, as such, circles the sun faster than other planets. The planet is only slightly larger than Earth's moon and has very little atmosphere to stop impacts. Therefore, it is heavily cratered.
Mercury is a rocky planet, also known as a terrestrial planet. It has a solid, cratered surface, much like Earth's moon.
Mercury's dayside is super-heated by the sun, but at night temperatures drop hundreds of degrees below freezing. Ice may even exist in craters. Mercury's egg-shaped orbit takes it around the sun every 88 days.
Mercury Information
Latest News About Mercury
To accentuate the geological context of the spectral measurements, the MASCS data have been overlain on the MDISmonochrome mosaic.
Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
White and red are high topography, and greens and blues are low topography. Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
10 Need-to-Know Things About Mercury:
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Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system.
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making it about the size of the continental United States and only slightly bigger than Earth's moon. It's smaller than both Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Ganymede. P
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One day on Mercury (the time it takes for Mercury to rotate once) takes 59 Earth days. Mercury makes a complete orbit around the sun in just 88 Earth days.
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Mercury's thin atmosphere is composed mostly of oxygen (O2), sodium (Na), hydrogen (H2), helium (He), and potassium (K).---> Thinnest of any planet
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Mercury has no moons.
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No evidence for life has been found on Mercury. It is unlikely life (as we know it) could survive on this planet.
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Standing on Mercury's surface at its closest point to the sun, the sun would appear more than three times larger than it does on Earth.
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Scientists think that there is ice inside Mercury's craters. The planet's north and south poles are cold and shadowy, which could allow them to retain water ice.
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Due to its small mass, If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would only weigh 37 pounds on Mercury.
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Since Mercury’s orbit is within Earth’s orbit, it can be viewed from Earth in the early morning or the late evening, but never in the middle of the nighttime.
Research and Exploration
The first spacecraft to visit Mercury was Mariner 10, which imaged about 45 percent of the surface and detected its magnetic field. NASA's MESSENGER orbiter is the second spacecraft to visit Mercury. When it arrived in March 2011, MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, where it continues to study the planet. [First Photos of Mercury from Orbit]
In 2012, scientists discovered a group of meteorites in Morocco that they think could have originated from the planet Mercury. If so, it would make the rocky planet a member of a very select club with samples available on Earth; only the moon, Mars and the asteroid belt have verified rocks.
To learn more about the missions that have studied the Mercury, click on the links under the "Missions" sidebar above.
Physical characteristics
Because the planet is so close to the sun, Mercury's surface temperature can reach a scorching 840 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius). However, since this world doesn't have a real atmosphere to entrap any heat, at night temperatures can plummet to minus 275 F (minus 170 C), a temperature swing of more than 1,100 degrees F (600 degree C), the greatest in the solar system.
Mercury is the smallest planet — it is only slightly larger than Earth's moon. Since it has no significant atmosphere to stop impacts, the planet is pockmarked with craters.
Mercury apparently shrank as much as 4.4 miles (7 km) as it cooled in the billions of years after its birth. This caused its surface to crumple, creating lobe-shaped scarps or cliffs, some hundreds of miles long and soaring up to a mile high. At the same time, the surface was constantly reshaped by volcanic activity in the planet’s past.
