The ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo has completed another flyby of Mercury, capturing new images of the shrinking planet.
Published Jun 20th, 2023 9:40PM EDTDespite being an icon in pop culture, our Sun’s closest neighboring planet, Mercury, has had a fairly boring life when it comes to space exploration. Thus far, only two NASA missions have explored the tiny planet. Now, the ESA and JAXA’s BepiColombo is giving us new glimpses of the first planet in our solar system. Three new images captured this week showcase the little planet in amazing detail.
All three of the images are captured in black and white and are relatively small, especially compared to the large images we usually see from spacecraft like the James Webb space telescope.
While we have seen success with the BepiColombo, and the Parker Solar Probe continues to break records as it touches the Sun, surviving that extreme radiation and glare isn’t easy. The ESA says that the frequency and duration of these arc thrusts will become longer as the probe continues its journey. The goal is to release the ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the JAXA Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter modules into orbit around the first planet in our solar system.
That main mission isn’t expected to begin until early 2026. For now, we’ll have to suffice with these beautiful and moody-looking Mercury images captured as the probe completes yet another flyby .
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