The smallest planet in our solar system and nearest to the Sun, Mercury is only slightly larger than Earth's Moon. From the surface of Mercury, the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed from Earth, and the sunlight would be as much as seven times brighter.

Mercury is the fastest planet in our solar system – traveling through space at nearly 29 miles (47 kilometers) per second. The closer a planet is to the Sun, the faster it travels. Since Mercury is the fastest planet and has the shortest distance to travel around the Sun, it has the shortest year of all the planets in our solar system – 88 ...

Jan 9, 2025 · Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and the smallest planet in our solar system - only slightly larger than Earth's Moon.

Jan 9, 2025 · NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system.

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Jan 9, 2025 · The mission focuses on fundamental science questions that can be best, or only, achieved by surface operations such as determining Mercury''s bulk composition, the nature of the magnetic field, surface history, internal structure, and surface-solar wind interactions.

Oct 20, 2018 · The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury blasted off on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou at 01:45:28 GMT on its exciting mission to study the mysteries of the Solar System's innermost planet.

At its nearest to Earth, Venus is some 38 million miles (about 61 million kilometers) distant. But most of the time the two planets are farther apart; Mercury, the innermost planet, actually spends more time in Earth’s proximity than Venus. One more trick of perspective: how Venus looks through binoculars or a telescope.

Not only is it the largest moon in our solar system, bigger than the planet Mercury and the dwarf planet Pluto, but NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the best evidence yet for an underground saltwater ocean on Ganymede. The ocean is thought to have more water than all the water on Earth's surface.

Jan 9, 2025 · NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system.