ESA spacecraft heading for Mercury takes snapshots of Earth

The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft took a series of images of Earth during its first of nine flybys before reaching its closest point to our planet.

The BepiColombo mission of the European and Japanese space agencies has successfully completed its first fly-by. On Friday, the spacecraft skimmed past the Earth’s surface at 6:25 AM from a distance of less than 12,700 km. On Thursday, it took some images of Earth from space. According to the ESA, the 34 minutes in which BepiColombo flew in Earth’s shadow were exciting moments, as it was the first time since launch that the solar panels did not receive direct sunlight.

Now that that moment has been successfully passed, BepiColombo can continue on its seven-year journey to Mercury. ESA and JAXA launched the spacecraft in 2018. Two more fly-bys to Venus and six more to Mercury will follow in the coming years. Once arrived, ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, among other things, will investigate how Mercury formed. Parts of the scientific instruments have already been activated to take images of the moon and to take measurements of the Earth’s magnetic field. This helps to calibrate the instruments for their final work.