Spacecraft Snaps Jaw-Dropping New Images Of Mercury’s Craters From Only 125 Miles Away

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The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on 1 October 2021 as … [+] the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre. The image was taken at 23:41:12 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2 when the spacecraft was 1410 km from Mercury. Closest approach of 199 km took place shortly before, at 23:34:41 UTC on 1 October. This image is one of the closest acquired during the flyby.

ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

A spacecraft has sent back beautiful new close-up images of the planet Mercury from just 125 miles/200 kilometers away.

BepiColumbo—a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)—flew past the closest planet to the Sun for the second time on June 23, 2022.

As it did its three cameras were able to capture black-and-white images showing craters on the planet surface. However, the spacecraft closest approach was over the night-side of Mercury. During its close flyby BepiColumbo flew from the night-side to the day-side of the tiny planet, witnessing a sunrise over the planet’s crater-pocked surface.

The region shown is part of Mercury’s northern hemisphere including Sihtu Planitia that has been … [+] flooded by lavas. A round area smoother and brighter than its surroundings characterizes the plains around the Calvino crater, which are called the Rudaki Plains.The 166 km-wide Lermontov crater is also seen, which looks bright because it contains features unique to Mercury called ‘hollows’ where volatile elements are escaping to space. It also contains a vent where volcanic explosions have occurred.

ESA/BepiColombo/MTM , CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The timing was crucial for the quality of photography it was able to capture because that division between light and dark—the terminator—threw huge shadows across the dramatic terrain.

BepiColumbo will orbit Mercury from late 2025 to help planetary scientists figure out the mysterious planet’s core, surface, magnetic field and exosphere in an effort to better understand its origin and evolution.

It will also help astronomers examine Einstein’s general theory of relativity in detail by seeing if the pull between the Sun and Jupiter (and between the Sun and each of the other planets) also very slightly affects the orbits of all the other planets.

Mercury is not an easy place to reach.

BepiColombo launched on October 20, 2018 and at the end of its seven-year journey must reach Mercury at a slow enough velocity to go into orbit on December 5, 2025. That necessitates flybys first of Earth, then twice from Venus, and six times from Mercury itself.

The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Mercury on 23 June 2023 as the … [+] spacecraft flew past the planet for its second of six gravity assist manoeuvres at Mercury. This image was taken at 09:48:22 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 1 (MCAM-1) when the spacecraft was 680 km from Mercury, the first image capturing the illuminated surface of Mercury during the flyby. Closest approach of 200 km took place shortly before, at 09:44 UTC.

ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

“We have completed our second of six Mercury flybys and will be back this time next year for our third before arriving in Mercury orbit in 2025,” said Emanuela Bordoni, ESA’s BepiColombo Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager. BepiColumbo’s first close flyby of Mercury was on October 2, 2021.

Although the images are only one megapixel they show the impact craters on Mercury that make it look similar to our Moon. Features BepiColumbo was able to photograph include the craters Heaney, Neruda, Sher-Gil and the enormous Caloris Planitia basin.

“The images highlight many of the science goals that we can address when BepiColombo gets into orbit,” said David Rothery of the Open University who leads ESA’s Mercury Surface & Composition Working Group. “I want to understand the volcanic and tectonic history of this amazing planet.”

This image represents BepiColombo’s first sighting of part of the 3.9 billion year old Caloris … [+] basin, which at 1550 km across is the largest well-preserved impact basin on the planet. With the Sun above, the highly-reflective lavas on its floor make it easy to see as the bright semicircular area roughly between the 2 o’clock and 3 o’clock parts of the edge of Mercury’s disc. Caloris is surrounded by a halo of less reflective (darker) lavas. Both the interior and exterior lavas are thought to post-date the formation of the basin by a hundred million years or so, and measuring and understanding the compositional differences between these is an important goal for BepiColombo when it begins its main science mission in orbit around Mercury in 2026.

ESA/BepiColombo/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Although it’s flying as one spacecraft for now, BepiColumbo is actually two orbiters; the ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). They will study Mercury in-sync to give astronomers two data points on some projects.

The spacecraft is named after the late Professor Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, an Italian mathematician and engineer who discovered a resonance that makes Mercury rotate on its axis three times every two years. His calculations also helped NASA use gravity-assist flybys of Venus and Mercury for its Mariner 10 probe, which the BepiColumbo spacecraft is using extensively to get into orbit of Mercury.

BepiColumbo’s next Mercury flyby will be on June 20, 2023.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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