2. FACTS ABOUT MERCURY
• Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System.
• Its orbital period around the Sun of 88 days is the shortest of all the planets in the
Solar System.
3. HOW IT GOT ITS NAME
• It is named after the Roman deity, Mercury, the messenger to the gods.
4. MORE FACTS!!
• Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earth's orbit as an inferior planet, so it
can only be seen visually in the morning or the evening sky
• Mercury's axis has the smallest tilt of any of the Solar System's planets
(about 1⁄30 degree), and its orbital eccentricity is the largest of all known planets in
the Solar System
5. VISITORS
• Two spacecraft have visited Mercury: Mariner 10 flew by in 1974 and 1975;
and MESSENGER, launched in 2004, orbited Mercury over 4,000 times in four years
before exhausting its fuel and crashing into the planet's surface on April 30, 2015.
