The European Space Agency (ESA) has released video showing a flyby of Mercury, the planet closest to our sun. The clip’s images were captured last week by ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter during a flyby close to the planet’s surface.
The stunning sequence of images (below) comes just days after ESA released some images from the same flyby. The video shows numerous craters created by asteroid and comet impacts over billions of years, including the 963-mile (1,550-kilometer) Caloris Basin (at the 15-second mark), recognizable by its bright appearance, which is caused by the highly reflective lava on its floor.
The BepiColombo mission is a joint venture with the Japanese space agency JAXA, which has sent along its own spacecraft, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The goal of the mission is to analyze Mercury’s core-surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere to learn more about the origin and evolution of a planet orbiting in close proximity to its parent star. ESA and JAXA aim to increase knowledge of Mercury following NASA’s Messenger mission to the planet between 2011 and 2015.
The most recent approach by the Mercury Planetary Orbiter was on June 23, bringing it within about 200 kilometers of the planet’s surface. Jack Wright, a team member who monitors the spacecraft’s three surveillance cameras, helped plan the sequence of images for the flyby.
“I punched in the air when the first pictures came down and I got more and more excited after that,” Wright said said in comments on the ESA website. “The images show beautiful details of Mercury, including one of my favorite craters, Heaney, which I suggested the name for a few years ago.”
Mercury’s Heaney Crater (bottom) is about 125 kilometers in diameter and features smooth volcanic plains. We can expect even more detailed images of Heaney once the spacecraft settles into its Mercury orbit in 2025.
The spacecraft’s latest flyby comes eight months after its first, which took it within 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) of Mercury’s surface. Four more flybys are planned, with the next in 12 months.
“Our instrument teams on both spacecraft have started to get their science data and we look forward to sharing our first insights from this flyby,” said Johannes Benkhoff, ESA’s BepiColombo project scientist. “It will be interesting to compare the data to that collected on our first flyby and add to this unique data set as we work towards our main mission.”
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