Take a walk outside on any clear night and take a look upwards into the sky. You probably won't see it in the midst of the star glittered black, but up there somewhere is a tiny red spec. The planet Mercury.
This incredibly hostile planet, where temperatures at the surface are hot enough to melt lead, is the closest planet to our Sun.
To observers, it isn't a particularly remarkable object. It doesn't have the majesty of the gas giants of Jupiter with it's enormous, raging storms. Or Saturn, with it's beautiful rings.
But to planetary scientists it is an incredible thing. Temperatures at the equator can reach 600 degrees, but scientists think there could be water ice in craters at the poles, which are in permanent shadow.
It is a fascinating place of extremes, but what is almost more fascinating is a tiny silver object now orbiting the tiny planet.
The object in question is NASA's Messenger spacecraft.
A project that started with a proposal to NASA 15 years ago finally made it to Mercury on Friday, the first to do so. A journey of 96 million miles.
This may be all well and good, but it's all a bit irrelevant isn't it? Wrong.
Space exploration, such as Messenger, is the most incredible, amazing, humbling, inspirational thing our species has ever achieved. In a world with so much technology, we take for granted just how awe inspiring what we have achieved is.
In all the billions of species that has graced this blue and green planet, we are head and shoulders more advanced than anything else. Ants have made wonderful colonies, growing a fungus which they eat. Bees create honey in their honeycomb hives. Whales can communicate over hundreds of miles. Velociraptors were incredible pack hunters and bats use incredibly precise sonar to fly.
All of these pale into comparison to what the Messenger probe symbolises. An animal, no more special than any other, aside from our intelligence, created something incredible. We saw something, wondered about it and then imagined, designed, built, developed, tested and then remotely sent up a completely man made object 96 million miles away to a tiny planet. And this achievement barely even made the news, a sign of just how incredible our species is.
Just look around you, every single thing in your home is more amazing, and far more advanced than anything any of the billions of other animals ever to exist has achieved. From the computer you are reading this on, right down to the cement that holds your house bricks together.
The most amazing thing is, these items that represent the achievements of our species, pale into comparison themselves when put next to our travels into the cosmos.
Space exploration is our crowning achievement as a species. To have left our home planet and set foot on another piece of rock in space, to look back at our blue and green sphere is so amazing, and so inspirational, it often prompts me to be awe struck on a starry night.
Try it yourself, gaze upwards on a clear night and look at the moon, then think "someone just like me, has been there, looking back at me" It sends shivers down my spine.
It's such a shame that governments aren't pushing forward to explore more of it.
"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." - Neil Armstrong.
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