BepiColombo is operated by the ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency ().The probe launched in 2018 atop an Ariane 5 rocket on an eight-year voyage that will place it in orbit around Mercury.

BepiColombo made its sixth and final flyby of Mercury on Wed (Jan. 8) capturing images of the tiny planet hinting at the mysteries it will soon investigate.

The BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back some incredibly detailed images of Mercury’s north pole. The snapshots were collected during its closest ever flyby of our solar system’s smallest planet.

During a June 2023 flyby of Mercury, BepiColombo encountered several characteristics of the planet's magnetic field. This field forms a protective magnetic bubble around Mercury and guards the ...

The BepiColombo spacecraft snapped a photo of the newly named Vivaldi crater as it sped by Mercury on Sept. 4, 2024. Credit: ESA / JAXA / BepiColombo / MTM A robotic orbiter just took its first ...

Now BepiColombo is heading back into the solar system before aiming to arrive in orbit around Mercury in November 2026. Then the spacecraft’s main camera will be unshielded and it will take ...

Most meteorites that have reached Earth come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But we have 1,000 or so ...

The BepiColombo spacecraft flew less than 200 miles from Mercury's surface and photographed volcanic plains and icy craters. It's the sixth time the spacecraft — launched in 2018 by the European ...

Mercury also contains an expansive volcanic plain known as Borealis Planitia, which BepiColombo spied on its flyby. Researchers think these plains were formed from vast lava flows more than 3 ...

Sequence of 89 images taken by the monitoring cameras on board the European-Japanese BepiColombo mission to Mercury, as the spacecraft made a close approach of Venus on August 10th, 2021.

BepiColombo made its first Earth and Venus flybys in 2020, and first swung past Mercury on Oct. 1, 2021. After one flyby in 2022 and 2023 each, the probe then made close approaches to Mercury on ...