Third mission to Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system and the one closest to the Sun. The first close passage to Mercury of the BepiColombo probe, born from the collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese one (Jaxa), was successful with an important Italian contribution from the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) and Sapienza University of Rome.
To get the first images we will have to wait a little longer because the first ones taken by the probe were overexposed.
BepiColombo flew over Mercury at an altitude of 200 kilometers and thus began to prepare for the systematic observation of the planet, scheduled for 2025.
BepiColombo, Europe’s first time towards Mercury
Launched on 20 October 2018 from the Kourou Space Center (French Guiana), the BepiColombo probe is at the fourth close encounter of its mission, in which, to face the journey to Mercury, it took a first push passing close to the Earth in April 2020 and then two more thrusts greeting Venus, in April 2020 and August 2021. In this way the probe was able to acquire the necessary speed to be able to enter the orbit of Mercury, from which it should be captured at the end of 2025.
The BepiColombo probe captures the ‘music’ of the Earth’s magnetic field
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