BepiColombo

After six long years, BepiColombo made its final flyby of the little planet Mercury. In 2026, the spacecraft plans to enter orbit around the closest planet to the Sun and begin a one-year-long science mission.

Just hours ago, the teams operating BepiColombo, Europe and Japan’s mission to travel to and orbit Mercury, released images from the spacecraft’s third flyby of the closest planet to our sun. With each pass, the spacecraft gets closer, takes more images, and reveals never-before-seen views of the elusive rocky surface.