The first pictures have arrived from BepiColombo’s third Mercury flyby – and they don’t disappoint.
The spacecraft, a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, looped around the solar system’s innermost planet on Monday, capturing ten stunning images of the ‘Swift Planet’ as it went by.
Three early releases have been shared, showing off a number of intriguing features that started to appear out of the shadows about 12 minutes following the closest approach, when BepiColombo was already about 1,800km from the surface.
They include Beagle Rupes, a ‘wrinkle’ in the planet’s surface caused by the planet cooling and contracting after its formation, and a newly-named crater.
The large 218 km-wide peak-ring impact crater visible just below and to the right of the antenna in the two closest images has been assigned the name Manley by the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature after Jamaican artist Edna Manley.
‘During our image planning for the flyby we realised this large crater would be in view, but it didn’t yet have a name,’ said David Rothery, a member of the BepiColombo MCAM imaging team.
While not apparent in these flyby images, the nature of the dark material associated with Manley Crater and elsewhere will be explored further by BepiColombo from orbit.
The images also indicated that the planet had once been flooded by smooth lava, demonstrative of Mercury’s prolonged history of volcanic activity.
BepiColombo also took a ‘farewell Mercury’ sequence of images as it flew away from the planet.
In addition to images, numerous science instruments were switched on and operating during the flyby, sensing the magnetic, plasma and particle environment around the spacecraft, from locations not normally accessible during an orbital mission.
‘Mercury’s heavily cratered surface records a 4.6billion-year history of asteroid and comet bombardment, which together with unique tectonic and volcanic curiosities will help scientists unlock the secrets of the planet’s place in Solar System evolution,’ said planetary scientist Jack Wright, also a member of the BepiColombo MCAM imaging team.
What’s next for the BepiColombo mission?
The next Mercury flyby will take place on September 5, 2024, but there is plenty of work to occupy the teams in the meantime.
The mission will soon need to increase its use of additional propulsion periods called ‘thrust arcs’. This has to be done to brake against the enormous gravitational pull of the Sun.
These thrust arcs can last from a few days up to two months, with the longer arcs interrupted periodically for navigation and manoeuvres.
The next arc sequence will start in early August and last for about six weeks. The mission will complete over 15,000 hours of solar electric propulsion over its lifetime, which together with nine planetary flybys in total – one around Earth, two around Venus, and six around Mercury – will guide the spacecraft towards Mercury orbit.
The craft, which was partially built here in the UK, is the ESA’s first mission to the planet nearest the Sun.
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