CNN  —  Researchers suspect that two meteorites found in the Sahara Desert in 2023 may originally have come from Mercury, which would make them the first identified fragments of the solar system’s innermost planet. The least studied and most mysterious of the solar system’s rocky planets, Mercury is so close to the sun that exploring it is difficult even for probes. Only two uncrewed spacecraft have visited it to date — Mariner 10 , launched in 1973, and MESSENGER , launched in 2004. A third,