Solar System Exploration: Planets: Mercury: Overview

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Mercury: Overview

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	MESSENGER spacecraft images have revealed portions of Mercury never seen by human eyes.

Sun-scorched Mercury is only slightly larger than Earth's Moon. Like the Moon, Mercury has very little atmosphere to stop impacts, and it is covered with craters. 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.

Featured Mission: MESSENGER
NASA's MESSENGER orbiter is the second spacecraft to visit Mercury. It made three flybys before working its way into orbit about Mercury in March 2011. MESSENGER is the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

Read More About Mercury

Just the Facts



	Metric \| English \| Scientific Notation



	Orbit Size (semi-major axis): 57,909,227 km



	Mean Radius: 2,439.7 km



	Volume: 60,827,208,742 km³



	Mass: 330,104,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg



	More Facts

Resources



	Missions to Mercury



	Images of Mercury



	World Book at NASA - Mercury



	Planetary Photojournal - Mercury



	Johns Hopkins University MESSENGER Mission Site



	Compare Mercury to other Planets/Moons

Visit Mercury

People Spotlight


	Lucy McFadden "I searched my soul...and didn't want to do anything more than continue to study astronomy and geology. I figured I was bound to become a scientist."



	Gerard Kuiper - (1905 - 1973) Astronomer



	Al Hibbs - Scientist



	Ellis Miner - Planetary Scientist



	Jim Adams - NASA Headquarters



	Meet More Space Explorers

Headlines


	26 Mar 2013:	Newly Named Mercury Craters Honor Hawaiian Guitarist, Beloved Young Adult Author



	8 Mar 2013:	Planetary Data System Releases MESSENGER Data from Third Mercury Solar Day



	6 Mar 2013:	MESSENGER Has Imaged 100 Percent of Mercury



	21 Dec 2012:	Recently Named Mercury Craters Honor Blues Singer and Animation Pioneer



	15 Nov 2012:	MESSENGER Finds Unusual Groups of Ridges and Troughs on Mercury



	More Headlines

Science & Technology Features


	10 May 2013:	Planets Aligning in the Sunset Sky



	18 Apr 2013:	Solar System Exploration @ 50: What the Experts Picked



	6 Feb 2013:	State of the Solar System



	28 Dec 2012:	Earth at Perihelion



	29 Nov 2012:	MESSENGER Finds New Evidence for Water Ice at Mercury's Poles

NASA Official: Kristen Erickson

Advisory: Dr. James Green, Director of Planetary Science

Outreach Manager: Alice Wessen