Space Part 1: Our Solar System: Mercury

There is nothing cooler than everything right?  Well, it's a bit presumptuous to say that space has everything.  However I like to think that it does.  Today however, continuing with the theme, I shall be talking about the Planet Mercury.

Mercury:

Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system.  At just 3,032 miles in diameter, it is just over 1/3 the size of the Earth.  Mercury is also the planet that is closest to the Sun, just 36,000,000 miles away, or about 4,500 Earths.

Here is the Earth next to Mercury

Because of Mercury's close proximity to the sun, it does not have an atmosphere.  The sun, in all of its angry power, burns away anything that even resembles an atmosphere.  Because of this, Mercury looks a lot like our own moon: cratered, grey, and dead.

Lacking an atmosphere, Mercury is open to bombardment by meteros, be them small pieces of space dust or large sized meteors.  In addition to being vulnerable to collisions, Mercury has some of the most wild temperature swings in the solar system.  The side of Mercury that faces the sun can get as hot as 900 degrees F.  The dark side on the other hand can get down to as low as -300 degrees F.  These wild temperature differences also last for a good deal of time because of Mercury's proximity to the sun.  As Mercury travels on its orbital path, it rotates only 1.5 times in one orbital period (about 87 Earth days).  For just one complete rotation of the planet, it takes 58 Earth days.  This slow pace keeps one side of the planet facing the sun for weeks on end, ensuring that no kind of comfortable temperature could ever occur on its surface.

Despite these temperatures, scientists believe that water ice might exist on Mercury's surface.  This is because the floors of some of the deeper craters are never actually exposed to sunlight.  Sad and dark, but great if you are ice.  Observations like this give scientists hope for finding liquid water elsewhere in the solar system. 

When a planet travels in front of the sun, it is called the planet's transit period.  Here is an awesome image taken by Nasa of the Transit of Mercury.  Mercury is the small black dot just off of the center.  The larger black dot on the left side of the sun is a sun spot.

Mercury has not been explored that much by humans.  There are many reasons why, but the main one is that it is very difficult to get a satellite orbiting the planet due to its proximity to the sun.  Only two large missions have ever attempted to explore the planet: Mariner 10 and the MESSENGER.  Mariner only gave us pictures of the planet, while MESSENGER is currently in orbit around the planet.  Because of the lack of scientific interest in Mercury, it seems as though the planet is doomed to be the first to die when the sun begins to expand towards the end of its life.  A sad end for the first and smallest planet in our solar system.