Smallest Planet in the Solar System

As a child have you ever thought that the things we see in the sky are really not as small as they seem to be. Have you ever wondered are there any planets that are smaller than our home planet? Do you know which is the smallest planet in the solar system? Well, the answer is Mercury.

Mercury has a:

• Surface area of 74.8 million km²,
• Mass of 3.3 x 10²³ kilograms,
• Volume of 60.8 billion cubic kilometers, and
• Diameter of 4,879.4 kilometers.

The distance between earth and Mercury is around 105.39 million kilometers and the distance between the Sun and Mercury is around 57.5 million kilometers. Mercury takes around 88 days to orbit around the sun, The rotation of Mercury takes over 58 days to complete. The daytime temperature of the Mercury is 750 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, while at night it goes down to -330 degrees Fahrenheit.

For a minute let’s keep all these numbers aside, we will see some interesting information about our little mercury.

Mercury is also the closest planet to the sun, even though it is the closest planet to the sun it is not the hottest planet, the planet Venus won the title of the hottest planet. As Mercury does not have an atmosphere, it cannot hold any heat, and all the heat is radiated back into space.

In terms of speed, Mercury is also the fastest moving planet, so it is also called a swift planet. It is the second most dense planet in the solar system. Are you wondering what is the first dense planet? Well, you are currently living on it, the Earth. Mercury is made up of 70 percent metal and 30 percent silicon. The planet has a more massive amount of iron than any other planet in our solar system.

When it comes to size, Mercury is more than 18 times smaller than Earth and we can fit Mercury inside Earth 18 times and still, there will be some space left inside the earth. Also, as it is very close to the Sun, it can be only visible from the earth at sunrise and sunset, at night it will not be visible.

Till now, 2 satellites have traveled to Mercury, The first one is Mariner 10, which was a spacecraft sent by NASA in 1973, it flew by the planet mercury three times. In 1975 the Mariner 10 ran out of fuel and NASA commanded to turn off the Mariner 10 probe. The second one is MESSENGER, also a spacecraft sent by NASA in 2004. It is the first spacecraft to orbit around Mercury. In 2015 Messenger spacecraft crashed into the surface of Mercury and left a crater on Mercury.

Can we survive on the planet mercury? No, Not really. Due to the high temperatures and high solar radiation and no atmosphere, humankind can’t survive on Mercury.

Hope we all learned interesting things about the little planet, Mercury!