Bepicolombo space probe handed over the first image of Mercury, reports European Space Agency (ESA).
“The joint European-Japanese mission of Bepicolombo showed a picture of Mercury, made on October 1, 2021, when the spacecraft flew past the planet,” the press release says.
The picture shows a fragment of the northern hemisphere closest to the sun planet with Calvino and Lermontov’s craters and Sikti.
The joint mission of the European Space Agency and the Japanese Agency Aerospace Research Bepicolombo started on October 20 from the Kuru Size (French Guiana) on the Ariane Rocket 5. The migratory module after several spans past the Earth, Venus and Mercury will deliver a couple of orbital apparatuses to Mercury. The first, MPO (Mercury Planet Orbiter) will be a multi-wave map of the surface of the celestial body. The second, MMO (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter) will study the magnetosphere.