On the morning of Thursday, June 23 Bepi Colombo. testCreated by the European Space Agency (ESA) in collaboration with the Japanese agency (JAXA), they have created a new one fit close To Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun. The probe maneuvers required to approach the planet, which will last until 2025, have made it possible to capture several new images of Mercury, which may be useful for new analyzes of the nature and composition of its surface.
BepiColombo passed just 200 kilometers from the planet, but when the spacecraft began a close transit in the night part of Mercury, the first images were taken about five minutes later when the spacecraft was 800 kilometers away.
The spacecraft continued to take pictures for 40 minutes as it continued to move away from the planet. This makes it possible to take pictures of Mercury with pastoral sunlight, thanks to which the Earth’s roughness becomes more visible.
Among other things, BepiColombo photographed the Caloris Basin, a crater formed after the collision of another celestial body with a diameter of about 1,400 kilometers. The basin appears today as a large plain and the greatest influence is found on Mercury, near Montes Caloris, a mountain range at an altitude of two thousand meters above sea level.
Meanwhile, the probe continues its journey, which will bring it ever closer to Mercury, so that it can be analyzed carefully and quietly during the actual scientific mission, which will begin in the first months of 2026.
–
–
The name “BepiColombo” comes from Giuseppe Colombo, better known as Bepi, an Italian mathematician and astronomer who in the 20th century devoted much of his studies and explorations to Mercury. It was Columbus, for example, who proposed to NASA an interplanetary track system for tracking, taking advantage of Venus’ orbital thrust, to allow the Mariner 10 probe to make close passes.
BepiColombo consists of two probes. The Mercury Planetary Probe (MPO) will maintain an altitude between 480 and 1,500 kilometers from Mercury’s surface. It has many tools for conducting surveys and experiments. Among them are several designers in Italy: ISA, to study the internal structure of the planet, and more precisely to detect the gravitational field, SERENA to study the interaction between Mercury and the Sun, SIMBIO-SYS to study the geological history of the planet. planets, formation of planets and soil.
The second probe, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), will act as a sort of top spinner, rotating 15 times per minute, between 590 and 11,640 kilometers from Mercury’s surface. It will have the task of collecting data on Mercury’s magnetosphere, that is, the magnetic field that the planet generates, despite its small size. From previous probe observations, we know that the planet is capable of diverting some of the solar wind, reducing processes that would rapidly devour its surface (erosion).
Mercury is a rocky planet like Earth, but its proximity to the Sun certainly makes it inhospitable: the temperature on its surface varies, depending on the period and region, between 430 ° C and -180 ° C. At the poles there are always shaded areas, where there are glaciers, but the average surface is baked by the sun. The presence of craters and irregularities tells us that earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur on Mercury, as in our country. Mercury is only 4,879 kilometers in diameter, less than half the radius of our planet.
–
