 Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is the least visited of all the rocky planets in our solar system. In my lecture I'll discuss and illustrate the dramatic and perplexing history of Mercury as revealed by NASA's messenger spacecraft that orbited Mercury from 2011 until 2015 and look ahead to BepiColombo. That's a joint European-Japanese mission that launched in October 2018. It's on a trajectory that will get it into orbit about Mercury in December 2025. There's a lot of work going on to prepare for arrival, including making the best geological maps that we can in advance, and a lot of that effort is going on here at the Open University. Join me for my inaugural lecture to find out more.