New images of the planet Mercury taken by a robotic spacecraft have just been released — and they show the scorched world in fascinating up-close detail.
The European Space Agency (ESA) published the photos as part of BepiColombo, a mission in partnership with Japan to send a craft to the rarely visited, and still quite mysterious, Mercury. This latest round of photos comes via the spacecraft's sixth flyby of the solar system's smallest planet, taken some 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury's surface. For reference, the International Space Station orbits some 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth.
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Let's go in for a close-up.
BepiColombo captured the image above while flying over Mercury's north pole. The crater rims cast permanent shadows.
"This makes these unlit craters some of the coldest places in the Solar System, despite Mercury being the closest planet to the Sun!" the ESA marveled. What's more, these craters could harbor frozen water — a possibility the mission intends to soon investigate.
Expect bounties more imagery and insight into Mercury in the coming years. BepiColombo launched in 2018, but after six flybys is due to enter Mercury's orbit (as opposed to just swooping by) in late 2026. The spacecraft will then split into two orbiters that will observe the planet.
"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," said BepiColombo's Project Scientist at ESA, Geraint Jones, in a statement. "In the next few weeks, the BepiColombo team will work hard to unravel as many of Mercury's mysteries with the data from this flyby as we can."
You can visit the ESA's site for a more detailed breakdown of those images, or read about previous flybys here.
