Mercury

Mercury is the planet closest to the sun than all the other planets in our solar system, the innermost and the smallest! Only being 1,516 miles long, Mercury has many surface features like craters, ridges, and terrains ranging heavily from all of the craters covering Mercury. Mercury is only about 35 million miles away from the Sun. That’s 57 million more miles closer than from Earth. It only takes Mercury 88 days to orbit around the Sun, and 56 Earth days to rotate on its axis; which is quite slow! Mercury’s surface temperature usually ranges to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, but has had low temperatures, with the lowest -280 degrees Fahrenheit, mostly because Mercury has almost barely any atmosphere at all! Mercury’s thin atmosphere contains small amounts of hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It even has a tinier amount of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium. Earth’s atmosphere is mostly of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and argon.
Mercury’s orbital speed is about 105,947 miles per hour, much faster than Earth at 30 kilometers per second. Since Mercury has less mass than Earth, the surface gravity on Mercury is has much less gravity than Earth. The surface gravity on Mercury is only about 38% of the surface gravity on Earth, for example, let’s say you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you’d only weigh 38 pounds on Mercury!
Mercury is an inner planet just like Earth, Venus, and Mars. Mercury doesn’t have any moons like Venus; Earth of course has one moon, named Luna. The difference between inner and outer planets are quite major. Inner planets, also known as Terrestrial Planets, are Mercury, Earth, Venus, and Mars. Outer planets, the four planets furthest from the Sun, are the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Inner planets are usually known for their small size and outer planets are known for their large size, for example Jupiter’s large size of 88,846 miles doesn’t compeat with Mercury’s 1,516 miles. The Asteroid Belt separate inner planets and outer planets. Most asteroids that have been studied to be located in the Asteroid Belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter; but, not all asteroids are located in the asteroid belt.