A spacecraft recently sent back some of the best close-up pictures yet of the planet Mercury’s north pole.
The European and Japanese robotic explorer went as close as 295 kilometers above Mercury’s night side before passing directly over the planet’s north pole.
The European Space Agency (ESA) released images that show craters with deep shadows on our solar system’s smallest planet.
ESA noted that the edges, or rims, of the craters called Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer create permanent shadows. As a result, these unlit craters are some of the coldest places in the Solar System even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.
Cameras also took images of neighboring volcanic plains known as Borealis Planitia. ESA noted that these are “Mercury’s largest expanse of ‘smooth plains' and were formed by the widespread eruption of…lava 3.7 billion years ago.”
Also appearing in the images released by ESA is Mercury’s largest impact crater, the Caloris Basin, which covers more than 1,500 kilometers.
This was the sixth and final flyby of Mercury for the BepiColombo spacecraft since its launch in 2018. The recent move put the spacecraft on a path to enter orbit around Mercury late next year. The spacecraft holds two orbiters, one from Europe and the other from Japan, that will circle the planet’s poles.
In a statement on its website, ESA noted that Mercury, a small, dry planet, is “the least explored planet of the inner Solar System. Learning more about Mercury will shed light on the history of the entire Solar System.”
The spacecraft is named for the late Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, an Italian mathematician. Colombo played a part in NASA’s Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s and, 20 years later, in the Italian Space Agency’s special satellite project that flew on the U.S. Space Shuttle.
I’m John Russell.
Marcia Dunn reported this story for the Associated Press. John Russell adapted it for VOA Learning English.
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Words in This Story
shadow – v. to cast a shadow (a dark figure cast upon a surface when a body blocks the rays of a light)
crater – n. a low area or depression formed by an impact
expanse – n. a great extent or distance of something that is spread out
erupt – v. to force out or release suddenly (often lava or steam that is pent up)
shed light –idiom to expand or increase knowledge
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