BepiColombo mission makes closest trip past Mercury, shares first picture

A joint European-Japanese space probe flew by Mercury for the first time on Saturday morning (IST), making its closest trip past the sphere since its launch in October 2018. 

The BepiColombo mission, named after Italian scientist Giuseppe Bepi’ Colombo, captured the view of Mercury as the spacecraft flew past the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre. While the mission closest approach was about 198 km from Mercury, the image was taken when the space probe was about 2418 km from the closest planet to the Sun.

“Because BepiColombo is arriving on the planet’s nightside, conditions are not ideal to take images directly at the closest approach, thus the closest image will be captured from a distance of about 1000 km,” the European Space Agency (ESA) had earlier said.

The monitoring cameras (MCAMs) provided black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution.

The spacecraft will make a total of six flybys past Mercury and use the planet’s gravity to slow itself down before entering its orbit in December 2015. Apart from the first flyby at Mercury, the seven-year-long mission has made one flyby at Earth and two at Venus to help steer on course for Mercury orbit in 2025.

The Mercury Transfer Module will deploy two science orbiters, the ESA-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the JAXA-led Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, into complementary orbits around the planet in 2025. The science orbiters have been developed to study all aspects of Mercury, including core and surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere.

The mission is aimed at understanding the origin and evolution of Mercury close to its parent star in a better way.