The European-Japanese spacecraft, BepiColombo, finally managed to approach Mercury and photograph the planet at close range, from an altitude below 200km.
BepiColombo first successfully approached Mercury on Saturday (2/10/2021), and they used the planet's gravity to slow it down.
After successfully approaching an altitude of just under 20km, the plane took a picture of Mercury using one of its monitoring cameras, a low-resolution monochrome photo.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA) the shots show the northern hemisphere of the planet, also showing the Lermontov crater with a diameter of 166km.
The joint ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission was first launched in 2018, and has so far passed Earth once and twice past Venus. The final destination is the smallest planet in our solar system.
BepiColombo itself needs to fly past Mercury five times before its speed can get low enough to release ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.
This needs to be done because Mercury's position is close to the Sun, so the plane is difficult to stop because it will be 'sucked' by gravity from the Sun. BepiColombo is scheduled to enter Mercury's orbit in late 2025 and enter service in early 2026.
Another challenge is the extreme temperatures. On one hand the temperature reaches 450 degrees Celsius, while on the other hand the temperature reaches -180 degrees Celsius.
The two satellites will study Mercury's structure and surface, as well as study the planet's magnetic poles.
BepiColombo is named after the Italian scientist Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo, who built and developed the gravity-assisted maneuvers used by NASA's Mariner 10 when it first flew to Mercury in 1974.
BepiColombo is the third mission to reach Mercury, after Mariner 10 and Messenger. This mission will examine how Mercury is formed.
