NASA probe offers new view of Mercury: an alien world right in our back yard

The overheated, underappreciated runt of the solar system is finally getting some attention.

Mostly ignored since a brief fly-by in the 1970s, Mercury, our solar system’s smallest, swiftest planet, received a longer house call last March: NASA’s $450 million Messenger probe, which achieved orbit, a tricky feat never before attempted.

Now, after poring over 100,000 images and reams of other Messenger data, space scientists have achieved consensus: Mercury is one weird world .... Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com