This is already the sixth mission of the BepiColombo probe in Mercury's orbit. This time, it approached the most minor planet in the Solar System to a distance of just 295 kilometres. The closer looks ...

"BepiColombo's main mission phase may only start two years from now, but all six of its flybys of Mercury have given us invaluable new information about the little-explored planet." The ...

The BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back three images of Mercury after a brief flyby of the planet on Jan. 8, 2025.

ESA/BepiColombo/MTM 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 ...

The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft, which has been studying Mercury since its launch in 2018, flew just 183 miles above the planet's night side during its final flyby of the planet.

The BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back some incredibly detailed images of Mercury’s north pole. The snapshots were collected during its closest ever flyby of our solar system’s smallest planet.

“One needs a lot of fuel with a very big rocket for launch, or one can use the help of the planets and do planetary flybys,” adds Johannes Benkhoff, ESA BepiColombo Project Scientist.

That sixth flyby of Mercury occurred Jan. 8, 2025. On that date, BepiColombo flew just 183 miles (295 kilometers) above the planet’s surface, then shortly after over its north pole. As it did ...

The photos were released by the European Space Agency (ESA) as part of BepiColombo, a mission in partnership with Japan to send a spacecraft to Mercury. This latest round of photos comes via the ...

The BepiColombo spacecraft will start orbiting Mercury in 2026. Right now, it's conducting a series of flybys of the planet to get into position for that orbit. On Jan. 8, one of those flybys brought ...

European Space Agency After this flyby the monitoring cameras on the spacecraft will be unable to capture any more close up images of Mercury Frank Budnik, BepiColombo flight dynamics manager said ...

Three images acquired by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft during its sixth Mercury flyby on Jan. 8, as selected by the ESA. | Credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM The BepiColombo spacecraft has made its ...