The European mission BepiColombo , a joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to the planet Mercury, has taken its first images of the smallest planet in the solar system. But it was only a fleeting visit.
The region shown in the image is part of Mercury's northern hemisphere, which includes large craters and an area flooded by lava billions of years ago.
"The flyby was perfect from a spacecraft point of view, and it 's amazing to finally see our target planet ," said Elsa Montagnon, Spacecraft Operations Manager for the mission.
The spacecraft is still traveling too fast to enter orbit but, thanks to Mercury's gravity, it will slow down a bit, before future flybys in the next few years see it settle around the tiny planet in December 2025.
There the real mission will begin.
BepiColombo will study all aspects of this planet, from its core to surface processes, the magnetic field and the exosphere, "to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star," the agency comments in a press release. .
The spacecraft was launched in October 2018 and consists of two scientific orbiters, one from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the other from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that will fly in complementary orbits around the planet.
