Rapid Fire
Mercury’s South Pole
- 18 Sep 2024
- 1 min read
Recently, The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission successfully conducted its fourth Mercury flyby, advancing the spacecraft closer to orbit around the innermost planet in the solar system.
- This marks a significant milestone for BepiColombo, as it provided the first-ever glimpse of Mercury's elusive South Pole.
- This will help prepare the spacecraft for its upcoming mission to orbit Mercury, which has been delayed to November 2026.
- BepiColombo Mission:
- It is a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission to Mercury, launched in October 2018.
- It is an ambitious and complex mission designed to study Mercury's surface, composition, magnetic field, and its interaction with the solar environment.
- Mercury:
- It is the nearest to the Sun and also the smallest planet in our solar system.
- Although Mercury is closest to the Sun, it is not the hottest planet. That distinction goes to Venus, due to its thick atmosphere.
- It has no satellite of its own.
- It takes 88 Earth days to complete a rotation.
Read more: Mission to Mercury
