Satellite Flyby Captures Historic Images Of Mercury
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) made history this week when their collaborative spacecraft, BepiColombo, was able to position itself a little more than 150 kilometers above Mercury’s surface and capture stunning images from two of its cameras. Many of the images that BepiColombo transmitted back to Earth were of the planet’s south pole and two special impact craters.
Multiple Gravity Flybys
This is the fourth time that BepiColombo has flown by Mercury in what is referred to as “gravity assist flybys.” This go round, BepiColombo had its speed slowed to the planet’s rotation around the sun. Unlike the Earth’s 365.25-day orbital cycle, Mercury only takes 88 days for a full rotation.
It was matching this rotation that led to the historic photographs. Three of the monitoring cameras aboard BepiColombo were each uniquely positioned so that they could capture Mercury from three separate angles. BepiColombo entered Mercury’s orbit from its “dark” or nighttime side.
With the spacecraft’s rotation around the sun nearly equal to the planet’s, the M-CAM 2 was able to get photographs of the planet’s surface as it became increasingly lit by our nearest star.
Discovery Of A New Crater
M-CAM 3 worked a different angle and was able to get shots of an impact crater that’s never been seen before. Measuring more than 155 kilometers across, members of the team decided that its sheer size warranted a name. According to David Rothery, a member of the BepiColombo M-CAM imaging team and a professor of planetary geosciences at the United Kingdom’s Open University, the large impact site was named Stoddart.
Its namesake is Margaret Olrog Stoddart (1865-1934), a visual artist from New Zealand.
Covered By Craters
As BepiColombo moved beyond Mercury and concluded its fourth flyby, two of its cameras went offline as scheduled. However, a third camera remains functional and is expected to capture stunning images of the planet as the spacecraft moves further away from its surface.
The collision of comets and asteroids on the surface of Mercury have left the planet pockmarked from pole to pole. More than 4 billion years’ worth of impacts from bodies of various sizes are a great part of the planet’s beauty that the BepiColombo’s cameras have been able to capture.
Evidence Of Lava
The rings that the countless impacts have created on Mercury’s surface show evidence of volcanic lava flows. These are planned to be studied further as soon as 2027 when BepiColombo enters the orbit after its sixth scheduled flyby and deploys all of its scientific instruments.
A Side Effect Of The Mission
Ironically, these wonderful images of Mercury were not a primary objective for the mission and weren’t even the reason why the cameras were installed on the spacecraft to begin with. Rather than use the M-CAMs to snap never-before-seen photos of the planet, ESA/JAXA had them carefully installed so that the space agencies would be able to monitor the BepiColombo craft. This was to aid it throughout its journey, with a particular need for the cameras to facilitate in the moments following BepiColombo’s launch.
Source: The European Space Agency
