Hot, Odd and Curious: NASA Orbiter Reveals Mercury to Be Surprisingly Complex

Mercury, a hard-baked pebble of a planet patrolling the inner solar system, has long been a bit of an inscrutable runt. But now that scientists are finally getting a close look, Mercury is proving to have just as much personality as its bigger siblings. The smallest planet in the solar system had not received much research attention until 2008, when NASA's Messenger spacecraft made its first flyby en route to entering orbit around Mercury earlier this year . [ Read more about Messenger's journey here .] [More]

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