Welcome to the calamity rodeo, folks. We're in the opening scenes of Mercury retrograde in Leo, which began on July 17 and will extend through August 11 when the planet goes direct in the sign of ...

Mercury has it rough. Not only is it the smallest planet in the solar system, it’s also the closest to our Sun. This unfortunate position has caused Mercury to develop cracks and fractures ...

Only two missions have reached Mercury before BepiColombo: NASA’s Mariner 10 flybys in the 1970s and MESSENGER, which orbited the small world from 2011 to 2015.

BepiColombo swooped past Mercury at a distance of 37,626 kilometers (about 23,400 miles) on Dec. 1. The most recent flyby isn't the spacecraft's closest encounter with Mercury; that happened on ...

Mercury released into the atmosphere from sources like coal combustion and gold mining can remain airborne for about a year. However, once it enters the ocean, it can persist for over 300 years.