CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – The only spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury ended its four-year tour with a crash landing Thursday. NASA’s Messenger plunged from orbit as planned and slammed into the sun’s ...

Skywatchers across the Northern Hemisphere have caught a fleeting glimpse of Mercury as it made one of its final visible appearances of the year. Appearing low on the southwestern horizon just after ...

Turns out, it's as tough to drop inward into the inner solar system, as it is to head outward. The problem stems from losing momentum from a launch starting point on Earth. It can take missions ...

A collision with an asteroid might have set the planet Mercury whirling oddly in its orbit, a new study suggests. When one body orbits another — say, a moon around a planet or a planet around a star — ...

The long-anticipated BepiColombo mission is entering its decisive phase. Launched in 2018, this joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is ...

On March 25, the MESSENGER spacecraft completed its 4,000th orbit of Mercury, and the lowest point in its orbit continues to move closer to the planet than ever before. The orbital phase of the ...