Aurora
Tuning into the cosmos…
LoadingAurora
Tuning into the cosmos…
LoadingTerrestrial planet
The smallest planet and the closest to the Sun, Mercury is a cratered world of extremes — baking days and frigid nights, with no real atmosphere to soften them. Despite the heat, radar has found water ice in permanently shadowed craters near its poles.
At a glance
Why it's fascinating
Mercury's iron core is cooling and contracting, wrinkling the crust into kilometre-high cliffs called lobate scarps — some still forming today.
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has been making flybys and enters orbit to map the planet in unprecedented detail.
Bright deposits in shadowed polar craters are water ice — preserved on the planet closest to the Sun.
Moons
Mercury has no moons.
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