Scientists may have solved alongstanding mystery in the study of Mercury. For the first time, pieces of the Solar System’s innermost planet could be on Earth, potentially shedding light on a world ...

Mercury's orbit. Mercury speeds around the sun every 88 Earth days, traveling through space at nearly 112,000 mph (180,000 km/h), faster than any other planet.

Reaching Mercury is such a challenge because “the gravitational pull of the Sun is very strong near Mercury, which makes it difficult for spacecraft to slow down enough to enter orbit around the ...

Orbit around the Sun: Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it has the smallest orbit of all the planets. Mercury’s year (the time it takes to orbit the Sun one time) is 88 Earth days long.

One of the simulations found that if a flyby occurred tomorrow and pulled Neptune out of its orbit just by 0.1%, there could be catastrophic consequences for Mercury and Venus.

BepiColombo launched into space in October 2018 and is making use of nine planetary flybys: one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury, to help steer itself into orbit around Mercury.

But Mercury isn’t the only planet to do this. Venus also orbits inside our orbit of the Sun, zipping around once every 224.7 days . This means Venus is in retrograde twice every three years.

Europe's BepiColombo mission will enter orbit of the solar system's first planet in about two years, but it's been whizzing past Mercury regularly as it lines up its approach.

It will go into orbit around Mercury in 2026, about a year after its original arrival time. The delay was prompted by efforts to overcome problems with the spacecraft’s thrusters.

On the other hand, R. Dearle has shown the presence of a strong infra-red absorption band at λ=10140, and this fact has suggested the possibility of a second normal orbit in the mercury atom ...

Astronomers have detected an exoplanet with a highly oblong orbit that experiences wild temperature swings — and it may be transitioning into another type of world. The exoplanet, named TIC ...