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Facts About Mercury Research Paper

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Mercury is an amazing planet in our solar system. It is the smallest, fastest and closest planet out of the eight planets. It is a terrestrial planet slightly larger than the Earth’s moon.
What is Mercury named after? Mercury is named after the messenger of the Roman gods Mercury. The Roman messenger had wings on his helmet and shoes. He could travel very quickly from place to place. The planet Mercury moves quickly around the sun like the Roman messenger Mercury.
The discovery of Mercury
Mercury was first confirmed as discovered when Galileo Galilei turned his telescope on the planets and realized they matched predictions made by Copernicus. Unfortunately, his telescope wasn’t powerful enough to reveal a disk for Mercury, but it showed how …show more content…

It has the mass of 330x1023 kilograms and the volume of 60,827,208,742 kilometers3. It is the second densest planet with the density of 5.427 g/cm3. It has a large iron core which takes up 80% of the planet’s radius and its magnetic field is 1% of earth’s magnetic …show more content…

The surface is battered and has many craters resulting from meteoroids and comets crashing into the surface. There are some areas which are smooth and some areas which are lobe-shaped scarps or cliffs, some are hundreds of miles long and soaring up to 1.6 kilometers high. Mercury’s crust has contracted as it cooled by as much as 7 kilometers (4.4 miles). The Caloris Basin (also called Caloris Planitia) is one of the largest features on Mercury. It is about 1,550 kilometers (960 miles) in diameter. It was formed by the impact of a large meteorite in the formation of the solar system. The Caloris Basin has been found to be a significant source of sodium and potassium. Instead of an atmosphere, Mercury has a thin exosphere made up of atoms and micrometeoroids. Because of the planet’s extreme temperatures, the atoms quickly disappear into space. Meteorites don’t burn up like they do on planets with atmospheres.
The temperature differences on Mercury are immense. The surface can reach up to 430 degrees Celsius (800 degrees Fahrenheit). Since the planet has no atmosphere to retain the heat, temperatures at nighttime can drop up to -170 degrees Celsius (-280 degrees Fahrenheit).
Missions to

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