As the smallest planet in the Solar System, and the closest planet to the sun, Mercury is just a little bigger than the moon that we see every day. Though it is the closest planet to the sun, it is not the hottest, which will be explored later. Along with Mars, Venus, and our own Earth, Mercury is a planet that is made out of the rock. The surface of Mercury is solid, and it is covered throughout with craters. The atmosphere is very thin, and Mercury does not have any moons to speak of.
Another interesting fact about Mercury
is how slow it spins when compared to the spin of the Earth. Our planet makes a full rotation every 24 hours, but on Mercury, things are very different. It moves very slowly, so it actually takes 59 days to rotate fully! On the flip side, a year on Mercury goes by very quickly as it has a much shorter distance to travel when compared to Earth. It only takes 88 days for Mercury to travel around the Sun. Thanks to the slow rotation speed and the speed in which a year passes, it takes a really long time for the sun to rise and set on Mercury. So, oddly enough, there is only one sunrise every 180 days!There are only a few of the amazing facts that we can tell you about Mercury, so you have to keep reading to find out more and to learn the top 10 facts about Mercury:
10Mercury Has Been Known of Since Ancient Times
9Mercury is Not the Hottest Planet
8Mercury is the Smallest Planet in the Solar System
When we look at our Solar System, there are planets of all sizes, and there are all types of possibilities in regard to how the planets form. We already noted that there are four planets made of rock, including Mercury. These are known as the Terrestrial Planets. The rest of the planets are made of gas and known as the “gas giants.” So, as you can imagine, the terrestrial planets are smaller than the rest.
You might think that it would be easy to say that Mercury is the smallest planet, but there is a bit of controversy around this. Until 2006, Mercury was not the smallest planet, it was the second smallest planet…so what happened? Up until then, Pluto was the smallest planet, but thanks to an IAU Resolution, which changed the definition of a planet, Pluto was no longer considered to be one. So, this meant that Mercury was now the smallest planet, not the second smallest, in the Solar System.
Mercury only has a radius of 1,516 miles and is only about 0.38 the size of Earth. When you consider that the distance from New York City to Denver, Colorado is about 1,700 miles, you can really get a picture of how small Mercury actually is. In fact, Mercury is smaller than some of the moons in our Solar System including Titan, a moon of Saturn, and Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter. Thanks to the fact that Mercury is almost a perfect sphere, we can get great measurements of this planet, as it is almost the same no matter where you measure.
7Mercury Has Only Been Visited by Us, Twice
You might be surprised to learn that there have only been two missions to Mercury, and there is a good reason for that. First, for some reason, we haven’t been very interested in the planet. There is nothing really special about it, like the Big Eye of Jupiter or the red surface of Mars, so we haven’t had a lot of reason to go. Second, it is so close to the Sun that it’s difficult to get something like a satellite into orbit, as the Sun would suck it right in. There have, however, been two missions, and one, which was launched in 2018, which is on the way.
The first mission, Mariner 10, was launched in 1973 and the focus of the mission was to take photos of Venus and Mercury. The data from this probe showed that there was a magnetic field around the planet and that approximately 80 percent of the mass of Mercury is made of a metal core.
The second mission, MESSENGER, was sent towards Mercury in 2004, and it finally entered the orbit of the planet in 2011. This mission was able to get images of the entire surface and was further able to get information on the core and atmosphere. The newest mission, BepiColombo, is scheduled to get to Mercury in 2024 and is a mission sent by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the European Space Agency.
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