The European Space Agency (ESA) has released new images of the planet Mercury as part of BepiColombo, a mission in partnership with Japan to send a spacecraft to Mercury. This is reported by Mashable, according to UNN.
Details
The series of photos was taken during the spacecraft's sixth pass over the smallest planet in the Solar System at an altitude of less than 300 km above the surface of Mercury.
It is noted that in the next few weeks, the BepiColombo team will work hard to uncover as many of Mercury's secrets as possible with the data from this flyby.
The main phase of the BepiColombo mission may not begin for another two years, but all six of its flybys of Mercury have provided invaluable new information about the poorly understood planet
BepiColombo was launched in 2018 and is scheduled to land on the surface of Mercury in late 2026. The spacecraft will then split into two orbiters that will travel around the planet for the next year to collect data.
Recall
NASA plans to launch palm-sized autonomous robots to explore the oceans beneath the ice of Europa and Enceladus. The robots will search for signs of life in the satellites' inner oceans using a special cryobot.