13 Unknown Kid Facts about Mercury

Planet mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system, it is a bit larger than the Earth’s moon as it is mentioned in the kid facts about Earth. Planet mercury is the closest planet to the Sun.

Mercury is called terrestrial planet, which means it is an Earth-planet made of rocks or metals and it has a hard surface. Planets like Saturn are made of gas. Like Venus has no moons and no rings around it. This article teaches about kid facts about Mercury, which also helps the parents to share knowledge regarding the Solar system to their kids.

Planet Mercury

Important kid facts about Mercury

1.       Planet mercury is 36 million miles away from the Sun: This might sound long way but actually the planet mercury is closest to the Sun.

2.       Distance from Earth: The planet Mercury is 92 million kilometers away from the Earth.

3.       Length of year on Mercury: The length of the time, which takes by Mercury to complete a year is 88 days of Earth.

4.       Named after God of messages Mercury: Mercury was named after the Roman God of messages Mercury who was believed to be the fastest of the Greek Gods. This is because the planets quick orbit of the Sun, travelling with a speed of 48 kilometers per second.

5.       Rotation of Mercury: It takes 59 days to turn on its axis and change from day to night, which means a year on Mercury is actually only one and a half day in length.

6.       Previously it was believed that the planet Mercury didn’t rotate: For a long period of time it was believed that the mercury didn’t rotate. But according to the kid facts about Mercury, in 1965 it came to know by using radar observations that Mercury did rotate.

7.       Atmosphere on Mercury:  planet mercury has a highly fluctuating atmosphere, which contains helium, hydrogen, sodium, oxygen, potassium and water vapor, with a combined pressure level of about 10⁻¹⁴ bar (1 nPa).

8.       Little planet: When compared other planets only Mercury is the smallest planet in Solar system. When compared to earth with a diameter measuring 3100 miles in total. Planet mercury thought to be 2^nd smallest until Pluto was changed to dwarf planet. Mercury is slight bigger than Earth’s moon.

9.       Planet Mercury’s surface is mostly dry craters and deep pits. This makes Mercury to look a little bit like Earth’s moon.

10.   Seasons on Mercury: On planet Mercury there are no seasons. The axis of the planet is not tilted and there the Sun stays the same distance from the planet.

11.   Believed that Mercury was two separate planets. This is because the planet was being visible at 2 separate points during the day, so ancient Greeks believed that Mercury was two different planets and named them Apollo and Mercury.

12.   Nasa launched the Mariner 10 in 1973:  the aircraft flew past Mercury three times before the mission came to an end.

13.   Nasa launched MESSENGER: In 2004 Nasa launched MESSENGER which stayed orbiting Mercury for four years making about 4000 rotations of the planet before running out of fuel and crashing into its surface in 2015. Read more.