The BepiColombo mission made the first of six flights near Mercury at 7:34 p.m. Friday, using the planet’s gravity to slow the spacecraft down.

Humans haven't sent very many space explorers to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. NASA's Mariner 10 took a look in the 1970s, and later NASA's Messenger went into orbit in 2011.

Turning spacecraft lemons into spacecraft lemonade. The post Spacecraft’s malfunction results in unprecedented views of Mercury appeared first on Talker.

Japan's Hinode spacecraft captured this image of Mercury passing in front of the sun on Nov. 8, 2006, using the spacecraft's Solar Optical Telescope instrument.

As it flew past Mercury on Friday, the BepiColombo spacecraft snapped the above photo from 1,500 miles (2,418 kilometers) away, about 10 minutes after skimming past the planet.

The image was taken at 23:41:12 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring Camera 2 when the spacecraft was 1410 km from Mercury. Closest approach of 199 km took place shortly before, at 23 ...

The BepiColombo spacecraft headed for Mercury showed off an epic last view of Earth while zooming away from our planet on Friday and Saturday (April 10 and 11). Footage from the spacecraft shows a ...

The view of Mercury’s south pole is a preview of what is to come, as BepiColombo is expected to collect better data of the southern hemisphere than did NASA’s Messenger spacecraft, which the ...

November 4, 2009. A NASA spacecraft’s third and final flyby of Mercury gives scientists, for the first time, an almost complete view of the planet’s surface and provides new scientific ...

Using data captured by NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, a team of scientists has constructed the first complete digital elevation model ...