“Stunning Snapshots: BepiColombo’s 6th Encounter with Mercury Unveiled!”

Recently released close-up photographs of the planet Mercury have been unveiled by the European Space Agency.

The visuals of the nearest planet to the Sun were taken by ESA’s BepiColombo mission on 8 January 2025, during its sixth and concluding flyby of the rocky planet.

BepiColombo passed 295km above the planet’s northern pole, photographing potentially icy craters in continuous shadow and illuminated northern plains.

This flyby was the spacecraft’s ultimate ‘gravity assist maneuver’, a necessity to guide it into an orbit around Mercury by late 2026.

These photographs represent the last close-up glimpses of Mercury to be taken by the M-CAM instruments on the spacecraft.

The module containing the M-CAMs will detach from the mission’s two orbiters – ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter – prior to entering orbit around Mercury in 2026.

Here are three of the most striking images captured by BepiColombo at Mercury during its sixth and final approach.

Cold, Ice, and Shadow

Similar to how the Moon of Earth has a ‘terminator’ – the boundary that divides day and night on its surface – Mercury possesses one as well.

This dramatic image of Mercury highlights its cratered surface, with the terminator line casting light and shadow on historic impact marks, enhancing their features.

Captured by BepiColombo’s monitoring camera 1 (M-CAM 1), it depicts shadowed craters located at Mercury’s North Pole.

The edges of craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien, and Gordimer create eternal shadows on the floors of these craters.

Consequently, these craters are among the coldest regions in the Solar System, even though Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun.

Is there ice water on Mercury? If so, evidence suggests it could exist within these very craters, and BepiColombo is set to explore this critical question when it achieves orbit around the planet.

Ancient Lava Flows

A relatively smoother area of Mercury, this is Borealis Planitia, characterized by an extensive region of volcanic plains.

Planetary researchers claim these smooth plains were created by lava erupting from underground on Mercury approximately 3.7 billion years ago.

Ancient lava inundated craters like Henri and Lismer, which are indicated in the labeled version of the image below.

Researchers estimate the surface wrinkles observed were formed over billions of years, following the solidification of the lava, likely as a consequence of the planet cooling and shrinking over time.

Bottom left is the Caloris basin, Mercury’s largest impact crater, measuring over 1,500km across.

Above it can be seen a bright, curved feature on the surface.

This lava flow appears to connect to a deep trough beneath it and bears the same coloration as both the lava on the Caloris basin floor and that of Borealis Planitia.

Did this primal lava flow enter the Caloris basin, or exit it? Another enigma that BepiColombo could uncover.

Ancient Explosions

Researchers have not completely determined what Mercury consists of, yet they indicate that recently brought material from the surface becomes darker over time.

Thus, features that are brighter are more recent.

This third photo from the BepiColombo flyby, captured by M-CAM 2, displays ancient volcanic activity and significant impacts, both of which contribute to delivering fresh material to Mercury’s surface.

The luminous region at the upper part of Mercury’s disk in this picture is the Nathair Facula, the remnants of the largest volcanic eruption on Mercury.

Its center features a volcanic vent with a width of 40km, which planetary researchers state has experienced at least three significant eruptions throughout its timeline.

The volcanic deposit spans at least 300km in diameter.

On the left is the youthful Fonteyn crater, which formed merely 300 million years ago.

Researchers can identify it as a newer feature due to the brightness of the impact debris radiating outward from it.

Further discoveries await

“This is the first occasion we have conducted two flyby missions consecutively. This flyby occurs slightly more than a month after the prior one,” states Frank Budnik, BepiColombo Flight Dynamics Manager.
“According to our initial evaluation, everything went seamlessly and perfectly.”

“While BepiColombo’s primary mission phase might only commence two years from now, all six of its flybys of Mercury have provided us with invaluable insights regarding this little-studied planet,” remarks Geraint Jones, BepiColombo’s Project Scientist at ESA.

“In the upcoming weeks, the BepiColombo team will diligently work to uncover as many of Mercury’s secrets using the data obtained from this flyby as possible.”

www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo