A spacecraft recently returned breathtaking images of Mercury’s north pole, showcasing some of the finest close-up shots we’ve seen so far. The mission, conducted by a collaborative European and Japanese robotic explorer, made its closest approach at just 183 miles above Mercury’s night side, passing directly over the planet’s poles.
These remarkable pictures, released by the European Space Agency, highlight the permanently shadowed craters atop Mercury, the smallest and innermost planet in our solar system. In addition to craters, the images captured views of neighboring volcanic plains and the largest impact crater on Mercury, which measures over 930 miles in diameter.
This mission marks the sixth and final flyby for the BepiColombo spacecraft since its launch in 2018. Following this maneuver, the spacecraft is destined to enter orbit around Mercury late next year. BepiColombo carries two separate orbiters, one designated for Europe and the other for Japan, which will explore the polar regions of the planet.
The spacecraft is named after Giuseppe Colombo, an influential 20th-century Italian mathematician whose contributions were crucial to NASA’s Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s and other Italian space projects that flew aboard U.S. space shuttles. This exploration effort illustrates the spirit of international cooperation in scientific research, and it continues to expand our understanding of the universe.
