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.