BepiColombo’s First Close Encounter with Mercury The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has captured its first views…
Browsing: Mercury
Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in our Solar System, orbiting the Sun every 88 Earth days. Its proximity to the Sun, only about 36 million miles away, results in extreme temperature variations, ranging from -280 degrees Fahrenheit at night to 800 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. Mercury has a barren, rocky surface marked with craters and has almost no atmosphere, which means it cannot retain heat or protect itself from solar radiation and space weather. Its thin exosphere is composed mostly of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium. Scientific interest in Mercury revolves around its geological history, its magnetic field—which is unusual for such a small planet—and its very dense composition, which suggests a large metallic core. Missions like NASA’s MESSENGER and ESA’s upcoming BepiColombo aim to study Mercury in more detail, offering insights into the planet itself as well as broader questions about planetary formation and evolution in our solar system.
BepiColombo snapped a detailed image of Mercury during its first flyby, revealing volcanic plains and…
BepiColombo Begins First Mercury Flyby The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury will make the first…
Proximity to the sun’s magnetic field determines a planet’s interior composition, according to new research…
Mercury is a desert world which scientists until recently considered quite uninteresting. NASA’s Mariner and…
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission completed its first flyby on April 10, as the spacecraft came…
Controllers at ESA’s mission control center are preparing for a gravity-assist flyby of BepiColombo, the…
It is already hard to believe that there is ice on Mercury, where daytime temperatures…
Starting around approximately 1200 – 1808 UTC (7:00 am – 1:38 pm ET) November 11,…
Today, November 11, 2019, we’re in for a rare treat, as the innermost planet, Mercury,…
A rare transit of Mercury will take place on Monday, November 11, 2019, when the…
It only happens about 13 times a century and won’t happen again until 2032, so…
Mercury is small, fast, and close to the sun, making the rocky world challenging to…
Theoretical physicists used simulations to explain the unusual readings collected in 2009 by the Mercury…
New research sheds light on how certain types of comets influence the lopsided bombardment of…
A newly discovered “great valley” in the southern hemisphere of Mercury provides more evidence that…
New research suggests that Mercury is contracting even today, joining Earth as a tectonically active…
A newly published study shows that Mercury underwent a period of rapid cooling and that…