MESSENGER Reveals Mercury is Periodically Slammed with Meteor Showers

It turns out that the closest planet to our sun is periodically hit by a meteor shower, and this shower may be associated with a comet that produces multiple events annually on Earth. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at this meteor shower to learn a bit more about it.

"The possible discovery of a meteor shower at Mercury is really exciting and especially important because the plasma and dust environment around Mercury is relatively unexplored," said Rosemary Killen, one of the researchers, in a news release.

A meteor shower occurs when a planet passes through a swath of debris shed by a comet, or sometimes an asteroid. On Earth, these small pieces of debris hit our planet's atmosphere and then burn through the skies, appearing to us as "shooting stars." Earth actually experiences multiple meteor showers each year, including the Perseids meteor shower each summer.

It seems, though, that Earth isn't the only planet to experience meteor showers. The suggested hallmark of a meteor shower on Mercury is a regular surge of calcium in the exosphere. In this case, scientists examined data from the MESSENGER spacecraft and found seasonal surges of calcium that occurred regularly over the first nine Mercury years since the spacecraft first began orbiting the planet in March 2011.

 It's likely that these spiking calcium levels are the result of a shower of small dust particles hitting the planet and knocking calcium-bearing molecules free from the surface. Called impact vaporization, this process constantly renews the gases in Mercury's exosphere.

"If our scenario is correct, Mercury is a giant dust collector," said Joseph Hahn, one of the researchers. "The planet is under steady siege from interplanetary dust and then regularly passes through this other dust storm, which we think is from comet Encke."

The findings could tell researchers a bit more about Mercury and its environment. This, in turn, may open up future studies.

The findings are published in the journal Icarus.

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