European-Japanese space mission gets 1st glimpse of Mercury
ABC News
A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system’s innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025
BERLIN -- A joint European-Japanese spacecraft got its first glimpse of Mercury as it swung by the solar system's innermost planet while on a mission to deliver two probes into orbit in 2025.
The BepiColombo mission made the first of six flybys of Mercury at 11:34 p.m. GMT (7:34 p.m. EST) 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.
The European Space Agency said the captured image shows the Northern Hemisphere and Mercury's characteristic pock-marked features, among them the 166-kilometer-wide (103-mile-wide) Lermontov crater.
