[ad_1]
BERLIN (AP) — A common Europe-Japanese spacecraft saw Mercury for the first time as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet during its mission to send two probes into orbit in 2025.
NS BepiColombo mission made the first of six flights of Mercury at 23:34 GMT (7:34 EST) on Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft.
After passing Mercury at altitudes below 125 miles, the spacecraft took a low-resolution black-and-white photograph with one of its tracking cameras before reopening.
The European Space Agency said the captured image shows characteristic pock-marked features of the Northern Hemisphere and Mercury, including the 103-mile-wide Lermontov crater.
NS joint mission It was launched by the European agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2018 and flew past Earth once and Venus twice on its journey to the solar system’s smallest planet.
Five more flights are required before BepiColombo slows down enough to release ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The two probes will study Mercury’s core and processes on its surface, as well as its magnetic sphere.
NS mission It is named after Italian scientist Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Colombo, who is credited with helping develop the gravity assist maneuver that NASA’s Mariner 10 first used when flying to Mercury in 1974.
[ad_2]
Source link