Mercury is a strange planet in our solar system. Mercury’s space is barren, rocky and environment.

It’s been hit by rock from space throughout its history forming craters. Because there is no
atmosphere, no plants. There;s been no weathering of those craters so they are very visible. You also
see masive cliffs on the Mercury, huge cliffs, many kilometres tall and those cliffs were formed as
mercury shrank. We call them wrinkle ridges as the surface wrinkled then the planet shrank. Can
Mercury support life? The environment of Mercury is much too extreme for eny kind of life. Day side
of mercury is about 450C and the side facing away from the sun is about -180C. Europe and Japan
have built space probes to study Mercury. Bepi Colombo is the third mission to the planet. Two
spacecarft going to Mercury. When they arrive they split apart and make measurements of
Mercury;s composition. Its structure, its magnetic field, its atmosphere and try to understand
evolution of the planet itself. And actually, by focusing on things like craters we might be able to
understand, what’s underneath the surface on the planet. Why should be bother doing all that?
Mercury;s really intersting from a number of different perspectives. My job is trying understand the
impact of the sun o n the planets and focusing on the earth, because space weather can be very
disruptive to our every day life. In fact, it can disrupt all type of telecommunications. But big space
weather events don’t happen very often at the earth. If I look at the Mercury, those bog space
wheather events happen every day, so what I’m trying to do is understand the physics of what’s
happening at mercury and applt that to the earth to try protect us. Bepi Colombo could also tell us
more about how earth was formed. If we want understand how our solar system formed and
evolved, then Mercury is key a part of that. Our current theories of solar system formation including
the Earth and other planets cant explain Mercury. It’s an anomaly. We need go to the mercury and
find out more information about this planet

he first European mission to explore Mercury, the smallest and least explored terrestrial planet, is
being launched into space on Saturday.The European Space Agency and Japanese Aerospace
Exploration Agency have each contributed a probe to study the planet.Space scientist, Dr Suzie
Imber, from the University of Leicester, explains how this small strange planet is unique, how the
mission could improve our mobile phone and internet networks and why Mercury might hold the
secret to how our solar system was formed.