What is the planet Mercury like?
Mercury's Wild Ride
What is the planet Mercury like?
Imagine the smallest, fastest, most extreme little world in our whole neighborhood. It circles closer to the Sun than anything else, and it's been racing laps around it since before there were dinosaurs to notice. Meet Mercury — the tiny troublemaker of the solar system.
First things first: Mercury is small. It's the runt of the eight planets, barely bigger than our Moon. If Earth were a basketball, Mercury would be about the size of a golf ball sitting beside it. Don't let the size fool you, though — this little ball has stories.
