Mercury’s North Pole as seen from BepiColombo’s M-CAM 1 instrument
During the sixth and final flyby of the mission on January 7, BepiColombo, consisting of two adjacent spacecraft, captured close-up images of calderas that have so far been hidden on Mercury’s surface.
The BepiColombo mission, launched in October 2018, is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with each organization providing its own craft for star exploration. Thuy.
During the latest flyby, the dual spacecraft flew about 295 km above Mercury’s surface, according to Gizmodo on January 11, citing information from ESA.
From this distance, BepiColombo captured images of Mercury’s caldera-filled surface, starting from the cold, eternal night near the north pole before moving to the sunlit northern region.
The photo shows Mercury’s eternal day and night boundaries
Using the M-CAM 1 camera device, the BepiColombo spacecraft recorded close-up images of the boundary separating day and night on Mercury. In the image above, the rims of the Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer calderas can be seen scattered across Mercury’s surface, creating permanent shadows that could allow pockets of frozen water to appear. .
In fact, one of the key goals of the BepiColombo mission is to determine whether Mercury contains water within its umbra, despite its close distance to the sun.
To date, scientists still do not know the structure of Mercury, but material pushed from underground to the surface tends to get darker over time.
BepiColombo is the third spacecraft ever deployed by humans to Mercury.
