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. You can check out the awe-inspiring images below.

For BepiColombo, 2024 was a turbulent year. The mission is a joint project by the European and Japanese Space Agencies – ESA and JAXA – and a thruster problem forced the ground team to change plans for the probe's arrival into orbit around Mercury.

Barely larger than our own Moon, Mercury orbits precariously close to the Sun at an average distance of roughly 58 million kilometres.

New images of the planet Mercury taken by a robotic spacecraft have just been released — and they show the scorched world in fascinating up-close detail.

The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury’s night side before passing directly over the planet’s north pole. The European Space Agency released the stunning snapshots Thursday, showing the permanently shadowed craters at the top of of our solar system’s smallest, innermost planet.

Stevenage-built BepiColombo makes final flyby of Mercury ahead of entering the plant's orbit in 2026.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, residing just 36 million miles from our Solar System’s center. However, not too far above its surface, the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo probe has taken the most detailed photos of the first planet ever.

The BepiColombo flew just 183 miles above the planet's surface on its sixth and final flyby before going into orbit next year

This is the third time a spacecraft has visited Mercury in the history of space exploration. BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras snapped detailed black-and-white photographs as it drifted just 295km above the innermost planet.