“We needed nine flybys (one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury) to slow down our spacecraft and bring it into a good position to enter the orbit of Mercury.” Sequence of 89 images ...

Europe's BepiColombo mission will enter orbit of the solar system's first planet in about two years, but it's been whizzing past Mercury regularly as it lines up its approach. The ESA reports that ...

taking advantage of the planet’s gravity to adjust its course so it can enter orbit in 2026. On the flyby, the spacecraft passed within just 180 miles of Mercury’s surface, enabling it to ...

This means that, from our perspective on Earth, it appears as if Mercury is moving backward in its orbit around the sun. Mercury in retrograde is not a rare or sudden occurrence. It happens three ...

The maneuver put the spacecraft on course to enter orbit around Mercury late next year. The spacecraft holds two orbiters, one for Europe and the other for Japan, that will circle the planet's ...

An object eight times the mass of Jupiter may have swooped around the sun, coming superclose to Mars' present-day orbit before shoving four of the solar system's planets onto a different course.

The result is that Mercury appears to reverse its motion across the sky, but in reality the planet is just lapping us because its orbit around the sun is so much closer-in and shorter. This ...

Dwarf planet Pluto, on the other hand, has a fairly squashed orbit. Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, has the most eccentric orbit, with the difference between the distance at perihelion and ...

But of these planets, which is nearest to the sun? Mercury is a strange little world. There are some craters on its surface that never see sunlight. It also has the most extreme temperatures of ...

The BepiColombo spacecraft is due to start orbiting Mercury next year, but a recent flyby has captured breathtaking images of its pockmarked surface ...