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BepiColombo’s mission is to study all aspects of Mercury, from its nucleus to surface processes and the magnetic field.
A joint Euro-Japanese spacecraft returned its first images of Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun.
The European Space Agency said the BepiColombo mission made the first of six overflights over Mercury at 11:34 p.m. GMT on Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft.
After flying over Mercury at altitudes below 200 kilometers (125 miles), the spacecraft took a low-resolution black-and-white photo with one of its surveillance cameras before taking off again.
Hello Mercury!
This splendid view of part of the northern hemisphere of Mercury was captured by @ESA_MTM about 10 minutes later #MercuryFlyby close approach, at a distance of 2420 km. https://t.co/jjGKrsQXDH#ExploreMore pic.twitter.com/EMhMJ5tKiN
-Bepi (@ESA_Bepi) October 2, 2021
ESA said the captured image shows the northern hemisphere and characteristic features of Mercury, including the 166 km wide (103 miles wide) Lermontov Crater.
“The flyby was flawless from a spacecraft perspective, and it’s amazing to finally see our target planet,” said Elsa Montagnon, spacecraft operations manager for the mission.
The joint mission of ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was launched in 2018, flying once over Earth and twice over Venus on its journey to the smallest planet in the solar system.
ESA said the BepiColombo mission will study all aspects of Mercury, from its nucleus to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, “to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its mother star “.
The mission aims to place two probes in the orbit of Mercury by the end of 2025.
The spacecraft could not be sent directly to the planet, as the Sun’s pull is so strong that a huge braking maneuver would be required to place the satellite successfully, requiring too much fuel for a spacecraft of this size. .
The gravity exerted by the Earth and Venus – known as gravitational assist – allows it to “naturally” slow down on its journey.
Five more flyovers are needed before BepiColombo is slowed down enough to free ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.
Farouk El Baz, a space scientist at Boston University, called the successful flyby an “extraordinary moment.”
“It’s wonderful because we used the gravitational pull of Mercury to place the spacecraft close enough that we could see the images,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We haven’t been there for a long time and only two missions have visited Mercury before, so we’re waiting for a lot of information. areas that never see the sun, but we’re not sure about that, ”he said.
“We hope that this mission will allow us to see whether or not there is some water in the polar regions, where they never see the sun, where it is cold, freezing. But the planet revolves around the sun very quickly. It revolves around the sun in 88 days. It is therefore very different from other planets. So we need to know what it is made of, how did it develop, whether or not it has a gravitational field.
The mission is named after Italian scientist Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, who helped develop the gravitational assist maneuver that NASA’s Mariner 10 first used when it flew to Mercury in 1974. .
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