Space probe “BepiColombo” captures the first images of Mercury

As the European Space Agency announced on Saturday, the probe transmitted black and white images to Mercury after its first flyby. EarthShow the northern hemisphere of the planet. With its large craters, the surface of Mercury is reminiscent of killing.

According to the information, the space probe flew over Mercury at an altitude of 199 kilometers. Since the arrival of “BepiColombo” on the night side of the planet, conditions have been “not ideal” for capturing images at close range, the European Space Agency explained. So the next photo was taken from a distance of about a thousand kilometers.

BepiColombo began on October 20, 2018, on a seven-year journey to the smallest and least explored planet in our solar system. The mission to the planet closest to the sun, named after Italian mathematician and engineer Giuseppe “Pepe” Colombo led by the European Space Agency, is Europe’s most complex space project to date.

The journey is especially complicated due to Mercury’s proximity to the Sun. Given the sun’s immense gravity, it requires a lot energyTo slow a space probe so that it can swing in orbit around the innermost planet of the solar system.

In the case of “BepiColombo”, this means: In order to set the speed, the probe must complete a total of nine planetary flights. He’s already flown near the plane once Earth And past Venus twice. After a total of six flights of Mercury, the probe is expected to swing into orbit around its target planet in 2025.

So far, only two missions have reached the US space agency NASA Mercury: “Mariner 10” in the 1970s and the “Messenger” space probe, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015.

The mission of “BepiColombo” is to investigate the properties of the internal structure of Mercury and its magnetic field, and among other things, to investigate the question of whether there is ice in craters facing away from the Sun.