BepiColombo’s Third Close Flyby Captures Stunning Images of Mercury’s Crater-Strewn Surface

2023-06-24 19:45:12
The Mercury probe, BepiColombo, has completed its third close flyby of the target planet, revealing the planet’s crater-strewn surface. The joint European/Japanese mission launched in 2018 is approaching the final leg of its years-long journey through the inner solar system. During this journey, the probe relies on the gravity of the planets Earth, Venus and Mercury to slow itself down enough to move from the orbit of the sun to the orbit of Mercury in late 2025. The European Space Agency (ESA) released the first of these new images less than 24 hours following the probe’s flyby. . The images reveal what the European Space Agency described as a “geological bounty” of craters, ancient volcanic mounds and lava flows. One of the most intriguing features in the images is the crater that has just received a new name, Edna Manley, following a Jamaican-British artist who died in 1987. The spacecraft also spotted the Beagle Rubis, a 600 km (370 km) long cliff. miles) formed billions of years ago when young Mercury was cooling and contracting. The images also reveal a variety of ancient impact basins that were engulfed by lava during the first billion years of the planet’s life, when the planet was still tectonically active.
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