BepiColombo Captures First Pictures for Mercury

The joint European and Japanese Mercury mission, BepiColombo, sent its first photos captured for the planet's orbit, and surface, media agencies reported on Sunday.

BepiColombo took the photos once it stood away from the planet by only 125 miles as the rover is still adjusting its speed and location to reach the orbit of Mercury in a process that would last to 2025.

Unfortunately, the photos were captured in low-resolution as the cameras were not ready for deploying any photos to high-resolution format. However, they depicted various features of the planet's surface.

Professor Dave Rothery from the UK's Open University told BBC: "It's just happy snaps as we're whizzing by, but what a wonderful view we've had of the planet."

He continued: "You're seeing a cratered surface, but also areas which have been smoothed by vast outpourings of volcanic lava. Some of the brighter areas are where volcanic explosions occurred in the distant past, and you can also see where today some of the surface material is dissipating to space."

"When we see really high-resolution images when we're in orbit, you'll see that the top 10-20m of the surface is dissipating to space, giving you these steep-sided, flat-bottomed depressions that we call hollows," Rothery concluded.

It is worthy to mention that the BepiColombo mission consisted of connected two satellites from the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The mission aims to provide scientists with more detailed and accurate information about the nearest planet to the sun, Mercury.