What is the difference between Mercury and the Moon? Has Mercury darker or brighter colours in the landscape? I know that the moon is greycoloured,and what about mercury? And which of the 2 has a more rough landscape? And is mercury larger or just smaller than the moon. A person here have said that mercury is not a interesting planet,but for me it is one of the most interesting planets in our solarsystem,because it has an extreme climat ,because it is closest to the sun ,and because that there is very bright sunshine and also intense solarheat and radiation. I think that it is time to visit this planet as soon as possible manned or (un)manned ,as i have described in another thread in space exploration. Thank you. Denis.

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Mariner 10 is the only spacecraft to have done a close-up survey of Mercury to date. The Messenger spacecraft is on its way and is due to arrive in 2011.

Here are some images taken from Mariner 10.

Here is a nice APOD of Mercury.

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Why takes it so long te arrive at mercury? To mars it takes less than a year,but to mercury it takes 4 years or so. Nice sites about mercury and all the planets of the solarsystem. Thank you! Greet from Denis.

I dont know, but maybe its because it is so close to sun and it as to do complex manouvres.

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Neither the rocket that launched Messenger nor the spacecraft itself has sufficient fuel to send it on a direct flight to Mercury. To reach Mercury, a probe has to kill off the considerable angular momentum it has from Earth. Messenger is going to use multiple gravity assists from Earth, Venus and Mercury to do the job. Travelling this way takes longer but doesn't require a large amount of fuel.

This link explains it better than I can.

This FAQ entry from the Messenger site has some good details as well.

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"A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent." -- Elbert Hubbard

Mercury is much denser than the Moon (5.43 g/cc vs 3.34). It is the second densest body in the Solar System (just behind the Earth). Mercury is probably mostly iron with a thin crust of silicates. The Moon has a very small core and is mostly silicates.

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