2023-06-25 03:03:11
The Mercury probe, BepiColombo, completed its third close flyby of the target planet last Monday, revealing a surface riddled with craters. The joint European-Japanese mission launched in 2018 is approaching the final leg of its seven-year journey through the inner solar system. During this trip, BepiColombo relied on the gravity of the planets Earth, Venus and Mercury to slow itself down enough to move from the sun’s orbit to the orbit of Mercury in late 2025. The BepiColombo probe flew 236 km (150 miles) from the surface of Mercury, and the scientists in charge of the mission took the opportunity to conduct The European Space Agency (ESA) released the first of these new images less than 24 hours after the probe’s closest flyby, which occurred on Monday at 3:34 p.m. EST (3:34 p.m. EST). 19:34 GMT). The images reveal what the European Space Agency describes as a “geological bounty” of craters, ancient volcanic mounds and pyroclastic flows. One of the most intriguing features in the images is the crater that has just received a new name, Edna Manley. ), after a Jamaican-British artist who died in 1987. David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the UK’s Open University, and a member of BepiColombo Science Imaging, said in the ESA statement: “While planning the flyby images, we realized that this large crater It will be visible, but not yet named. It will apparently be of interest to BepiColombo scientists in the future, because it reveals traces of a dark, low reflectivity material, which may be the remains of early Mercury’s carbon-rich crust. In addition, smooth lava flooded the floor of the basin within it. Evidence for Mercury’s prolonged history of volcanic activity.” The spacecraft also spotted the Beagle Rupes, a 600 km (370 miles) cliff that formed billions of years ago when young Mercury was cooling and contracting. The Beagle Rubis cliff was discovered by NASA’s Messenger mission, which flew around Mercury between 2011 and 2015, and scientists are looking to compare scenes captured by this mission with those captured by BepiColombo. The images also reveal a variety of basins. Ancient impacts flooded lava during the first billion years of the planet’s life, when it was still tectonically active. “This is a fascinating region for studying the tectonic history of Mercury,” Valentina Galotsi, a member of the BepiColombo team and a scientist at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics, said in the release. The complex interaction between these impact basins is such that as the planet cools and shrinks, it causes its surface crust to slide, creating a variety of strange features that we will pursue in more detail once in orbit.” To the planet from the night side. The closest images were taken at a distance of 3,500 km (2,170 miles), 20 minutes after closest approach. (Russia Today)
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