Mercury ahead!
This is the Solar System’s innermost planet Mercury, destination for the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission.
The image was taken by BepiColombo's monitoring camera 1 at 10:32 UT (12:32 CEST) 19 June when the spacecraft was still about 121 000 km away from Mercury, but it is rapidly closing in on the planet for a close flyby of about 236 km altitude at 20:34 BST / 21:34 CEST tonight. BepiColombo will make its closest approach on the night side of the planet.
Mercury is seen just below centre of the image, its day and night side clearly visible. Even at this distance, lighter and darker patches of Mercury’s surface are already becoming apparent.
The planet appears to lie just below the Mercury Transfer Module’s solar array – the spacecraft element that extends from the right of the image into the centre. Part of the spacecraft body is also visible to the lower left of the image.
The bright stripe spanning the width of the image and passing across Mercury is an imaging artefact.
The gravity assist flyby will change the direction and speed of the spacecraft so it can eventually enter orbit around Mercury in 2025. Since launching in 2018 it has already conducted one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and two at Mercury. After tonight’s flyby it will perform three more Mercury flybys – two in 2024 and one in 2025 – before entering orbit for its mission to understand Mercury’s mysteries.
