Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM Plus, the situation doesn’t get any easier once you’re near Mercury. There’s no atmosphere to help a spacecraft slow down like there is at Venus or Mars.

Mercury's surface can reach a blistering 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius) during the day, according to NASA. But the planet lacks an atmosphere to hold that heat in — so, on Mercury ...

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Jamie Carter is an award-winning reporter who covers the night sky. A few evenings ago I found myself in a remote layby in Utah close to ...

The two orbiters will collaborate to investigate Mercury’s origin and evolution and its internal structure, geological features, composition, and craters. They will also study its atmosphere ...

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, followed by Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Mercury orbits ...

How hot is Mercury? Mercury's sun-facing side is scorched by temperatures of around 430°C, hot enough to melt lead. Without a substantial atmosphere to distribute heat away from the areas facing the ...

Those ions continuously strip Mercury's atmosphere, but Mercury has a way to keep regenerating that atmosphere with material from its own surface. Finally, Mercury, despite being in the hottest ...

"This is because Mercury has no atmosphere to regulate the temperature," Vincent said. "Its gravitational force is just too little to hold on to a blanket of air around it, and even if an ...