Mercury takes only 88 Earth days to orbit the sun.

How hot is Mercury? Mercury's sun-facing side is scorched by temperatures of around 430°C, hot enough to melt lead. Without a substantial atmosphere to distribute heat away from the areas facing the ...

But the planet lacks an atmosphere to hold that heat in — so, on Mercury, dark equals cold. At night, temperatures can plunge to minus 290 F (minus 180 C). The planet's north pole is pockmarked ...

Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM Plus, the situation doesn’t get any easier once you’re near Mercury. There’s no atmosphere to help a spacecraft slow down like there is at Venus or Mars.

It's the smallest guy in the neighborhood, and it lives in the roughest part of town—high temperature ... Those ions continuously strip Mercury's atmosphere, but Mercury has a way to keep ...

Mercury has almost no atmosphere. A thick atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide covers Venus, trapping heat and raising surface temperatures. Clouds on Venus form from sulfuric acid.

Despite Mercury being about 39% as far from the sun as Earth is, its surface temperature can range from ... They will also study its atmosphere, magnetosphere, and the effect of the solar wind ...