Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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Two spacecraft built by Europe and Japan captured their first up-close look at the planet Mercury in a weekend flyby, revealing a rocky world covered with craters.
The two linked probes, known together as BepiColombo, snapped their first image of Mercury late Friday (Oct. 1) during a flyby that sent them zooming around the planet. The encounter marked the first of six Mercury flybys for BepiColombo, a joint effort by the space agencies of Europe and Japan, to slow itself enough to enter orbit around the planet in 2025.
BepiColombo took its first official photo of Mercury at 7:44 p.m. EDT (2344 GMT) with its Mercury Transfer Module Monitoring Camera 2, a black-and-white navigation camera, as the probe was about 1,502 miles (2,418 kilometers) away from the planet, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). Just 10 minutes earlier, at 7:34 p.m. EDT, BepiColombo made its closest approach to Mercury, passing within 124 miles (200 km) of the planet.
Mercury looks stunning in this 1st flyby photo from Europe and Japan's BepiColombo mission
It's the first of six Mercury flybys before BepiColombo enters orbit in 2025.
www.space.com
I tried to put the pic in but it's looking like it's not going to work. They are in the link.
