Europe-Japan space mission captures images of Mercury

BepiColombo is on a mission to study all aspects of Mercury, from its core to surface processes and magnetic field.

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft has sent back its first images of Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun.

The European Space Agency said the BepiColombo mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11:34pm GMT on Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft down.

After swooping past Mercury at altitudes of under 200 kilometers (125 miles), the spacecraft took a low resolution black-and-white photo with one of its monitoring cameras before zipping off again.