The BepiColombo spacecraft, a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, completed its sixth and final flyby of Mercury, snapping remarkable images of the planet's north pole.
A spacecraft buzzed Mercury 's north pole and beamed back stunning photos. The European and Japanese robotic explorer got as close as 295 kilometers above Mercury 's night side before flying directly over the planet's north pole. The European Space Agency published the impressive images Thursday, showing craters permanently shadowed at the top of the smallest and innermost planet in our solar system.
The cameras also captured views of neighboring volcanic plains and Mercury's largest crater, which stretches for more than 1,500 kilometers. This was the sixth and last flyby of Mercury by the BepiColombo spacecraft since its launch in 2018. The maneuver put the spacecraft on course to enter orbit around Mercury late next year. The spacecraft contains two orbiters, one for Europe and one for Japan, that will orbit the planet's poles. The spacecraft is named after the late Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, a 20th-century Italian mathematician who contributed to NASA's Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s and, two decades later, to the Italian Space Agency's satellite project that flew on US space shuttles
SPACE MERCURY PLANET SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY
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BepiColombo spacecraft flies by Mercury, sees volcanic plain and impact cratersKiona Smith is a science writer based in the Midwest, where they write about space and archaeology. They've written for Inverse, Ars Technica, Forbes and authored the book, Peeing and Pooping in Space: A 100% Factual Illustrated History. They attended Texas A&M University and have a degree in anthropology.
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