Extract from ABC News
A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system's innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.
Key points:
- The spacecraft took a photo as it flew within 200km of the planet's surface
- The mission was launched in 2018
- Five further fly-bys are needed before BepiColombo slows enough to release space bots
The BepiColombo mission made the first of six fly-bys of Mercury on Saturday morning AEST, using the planet's gravity to slow itself down.
After swooping past Mercury at altitudes of under 200 kilometres, the spacecraft took a low resolution black-and-white photo with one of its monitoring cameras.
The European Space Agency (ESA) said the captured image showed the planet's northern hemisphere and its characteristic pock-marked features, among them the 166-kilometre-wide Lermontov crater.
The joint mission by the European agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was launched in 2018, flying once past Earth and twice past Venus on its journey to the solar system's smallest planet.
Five further fly-bys are needed before BepiColombo is sufficiently slowed down to release ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.
The two probes will study Mercury's core and processes on its surface, as well as its magnetic sphere.
The mission is named after Italian scientist Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, who is credited with helping develop the gravity assist manoeuvre that NASA's Mariner 10 first used when it flew to Mercury in 1974.
AP
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