Mercury formed about 4.5 billion years ago when gravity pulled swirling gas and dust together to form this small planet nearest the Sun. Like its fellow terrestrial planets, Mercury has a central core, a rocky mantle, and a solid crust.

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.

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.

Jan 18, 2018 · NASA and MIT scientists analyzed subtle changes in Mercury’s motion to learn about the Sun and how its dynamics influence the planet’s orbit. The position of Mercury over time was determined from radio tracking data obtained …

May 16, 2024 · 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 · Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited entirely by robots.

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.