NASA prepares to feel the heat with mission to Mercury

NASA is about to embark on its hottest mission ever - to launch the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury, the nearest rock to the Sun.

The Messenger spacecraft, due to lift off atop a Boeing Delta 2 booster on Monday, will be baked by pizza-oven temperatures of up to 370 degrees C as it orbits the tiny planet to map its surface and look for frozen water in shady polar craters.

Remarkably, the only thing between the probe's delicate science instruments and the blistering sun is a handmade ceramic-cloth quilt just over half a centimetre (one-quarter inch) thick.