The space probe sent a photo of Mercury taken from a distance of less than 1,000 km

European Space Agency published detailed image of Mercury taken from the BepiColombo mission probe. The image was taken on June 23 when the space station was about 920 km from the planet's surface. Shortly before that, performing a flyby maneuver, she made the closest approach, reducing the distance to 200 km.

Cameras with the Mercury Transfer Module made it possible to take black and white pictures with a resolution of 1024 × 1024 pixels. The image has been interpolated to 2048×2048 pixels to sharpen details.

There are some artifacts in the image, such as horizontal stripes, but even so, the picture allows you to see the rich geological landscape of the planet.

The photo also shows some parts of the spacecraft, including the magnetometer rod on the left and a small part of the antenna on the lower right.

This gravity assist was the second to orbit Mercury and the fifth of nine flybys in total. During its seven-year journey to the smallest and closest planet to the Sun, BepiColombo makes one flyby of the Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury to enter the desired orbit in 2025. It is then that a more advanced technique will be used to study this planet in detail.

The following gravity maneuvers:

• Third flyby of Mercury - June 20, 2023;
• Fourth - September 5, 2024;
• Fifth - December 2, 2024;
• Sixth - January 9, 2025;
• Entering the orbit of Mercury - December 5, 2025.

BepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It includes two research modules at once, Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, which will operate in different elliptical orbits, providing parallel execution of various research. They are now flying in pairs in the Mercury Transfer Module.

The purpose of the mission is to study the composition of the surface of Mercury, its internal structure, the surrounding space, the geological history of development and magnetic fields.