See the amazing images of Mercury captured by the BepiColombo mission

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s BepiColombo mission has made another flyby of Mercury, capturing fascinating images of this lesser-studied inner planet. On January 8, 2025, the spacecraft made its sixth flyby of the small planet located close to the sun, taking advantage of the planet’s gravity to adjust its course so it can enter orbit in 2026. On the flyby, the spacecraft passed within just 180 miles of Mercury’s surface, enabling it to capture close-up images of the planet. It passed the planet’s night side, which faces out into space and away from the sun, then over its north pole before swinging over to see its north hemisphere in the sunlight. The images were captured with the spacecraft’s three monitoring cameras, called M-CAM 1, 2, and 3, which take black-and-white images with a resolution of 1024 x 1024. Despite this relatively low resolution, the images are still scientifically valuable as they show many of the planet’s surface features. There won’t be any more close-up images of Mercury from the monitoring cameras in the future, as the spacecraft is scheduled to split into several different parts. In addition to the Mercury Transfer Module, which is the part of the spacecraft that is responsible for carrying the mission to Mercury, there are also two orbiters called the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, which will split off to enter orbit. As the monitoring cameras are on the Mercury Transfer Module, they won’t get the chance to take any more images of Mercury. The images taken show the craters covering the surface, including those at the planet’s north pole, which are steep enough that their floors are in perpetual darkness. These dark regions could contain water ice, and investigating this possibility is a major aim for the mission. It’s also not known exactly what Mercury is made of, so studying its composition in more detail is another aim for the mission and should help explain how the planet formed. The European and Japanese mission BepiColombo has made its first flyby of Mercury, capturing images of the planet it will eventually be exploring in more depth. In order to get close to the planet, the spacecraft makes use of the planet’s gravity to make increasingly close approaches. It has already made one flyby of Earth and two of Venus, and this was the first of six flybys of Mercury. As the craft passed by, it snapped images of Mercury using the Monitoring Camera 3 on its Mercury Transfer Module, which captures images in black and white with a resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels. In the image below, you can see the spacecraft’s antennae and magnetometer boom. BepiColombo’s close Venus encounter Venus has been a hot spot in the solar system this week, as two different missions have captured footage of their flybys of the planet. Solar Orbiter, a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as BepiColombo, a joint project between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), both performed flybys of the planet to gain a gravity boost on their way to their destinations of the sun and Mercury respectively. Artist impression of Solar Orbiter during its second flyby of the planet. The spacecraft will make numerous gravity assist flybys at Venus to bring it closer to the sun and to tilt its orbit in order to observe our star from different perspectives. ESA/ATG medialab Mars might be the planet in our solar system that gets the most attention from visiting spacecraft, but this week, Venus will be entering the spotlight. The planet will host not one but two visitors as two different craft perform flybys to gain a gravitational boost on their way to other destinations. But the mission operators won’t let this chance to gather some extra information on Venus go to waste, so both craft will be collecting data as they go by. Upgrade your lifestyleDigital Trends helps readers keep tabs on the fast-paced world of tech with all the latest news, fun product reviews, insightful editorials, and one-of-a-kind sneak peeks.