The BepiColombo spacecraft is about to make its first Mercury flyby

By Will Gater

Artist’s content of the BepiColombo spacecraft astatine Mercury

Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mercury: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

The European and Japanese ngo BepiColombo volition marque a flyby of the star system’s inner-most satellite adjacent month, diving to conscionable 200 kilometres supra the aboveground of sun-scorched Mercury.

The spacecraft, which is specially engineered to withstand the precocious temperatures adjacent our star, volition cod information and images during the pass, making its closest attack to Mercury – known arsenic peri-herm – connected 1 October.

This volition beryllium “the archetypal of six flybys of Mercury aimed astatine reducing BepiColombo’s velocity,” says Elsa Montagnon …