Mercury’s South Pole | 18 Sep 2024

Source: IT

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