The European and Japanese team behind the BepiColombo mission to Mercury has shared the first image of the spacecraft’s recent flyby of the distant planet.
The black-and-white image shows the planet in incredible detail, its surface pockmarked by numerous craters from billions of years of asteroid and comet bombardment.Here's a first look from today's #MercuryFlyby capturing such an amazing array of the planet's rich geological features 🤩https://t.co/hC6TfMmCy1#ExploreFarther pic.twitter.
Look toward the bottom left of the image and you’ll be able to spot the 124-mile-wide multi-ringed basin, part of which is obscured by the magnetometer boom. “Even during fleeting flybys, these science ‘grabs’ are extremely valuable,” said Johannes Benkhoff, ESA’s BepiColombo project scientist. “We get to fly our world-class science laboratory through diverse and unexplored parts of Mercury’s environment that we won’t have access to once in orbit, while also getting a head start on preparations to make sure we will transition into the main science mission as quickly and smoothly as possible.