In the order of planets Solar system, Mercury is the closest to the massive star we orbit. Therefore, a manned mission to this region is practically impossible. However, space probes also have a certain complexity, due to this same issue of temperatures.
That is one of the characteristics that make the mission BepiColombo, so successful. The space probe made an amazing approach to the first planet in the Solar System and captured the appearance of its surface.
Anyone could imagine that it looks red and filled with seas of magma or lava. But the reality is that it looks like a moon.
In fact, the BepiColombo mission captures the image that shows the topography of the region and captures the impressive 600 km long Beagle Rupes escarpment, which cuts through the Sveinsdóttir elongated impact crater.
The Beagle Rupes is bordered by a slab of Mercury’s crust that has been pushed to the west by at least 2 km above the adjacent terrain. The scarp curves back at each end more strongly than most other examples on Mercury.
These impact craters, as the name suggests, are asteroid crashes traveling through our own Solar System.
BepiColombo is a joint space mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) that was launched in October 2018 with the aim of exploring the planet Mercury.
The mission is named after Italian Professor Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, a renowned scientist who studied Mercury’s features and atmosphere. The main objective of BepiColombo is to study in detail the composition, geological structure, magnetosphere and origin of the planet Mercury.
The mission uses two spacecraft: ESA’s Mercury Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Orbiter (MMO). Both orbiters are designed to make complementary measurements and observations of Mercury from different orbits.