A space mission jointly launched by the European and Japanese space agencies has captured its first views of the planet Mercury during a “flawless” flyby.The BepiColombo mission’s closest approach took place close to midnight on Friday when the spacecraft came within 200km (125 miles) of Mercury’s surface.
The joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was launched in 2018.Using its monitoring cameras and capturing data from a number of scientific instruments – which was downloaded over the course of Saturday morning – a selection of first impressions has now been published by …
