Space probe close to entering Mercury's orbit

The probe, equipped with Swiss instruments, has completed the last milestone before entering Mercury's orbit. The European-Japanese space probe has thus come closer to Mercury than ever before, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced on X on Wednesday. At 06:58 Swiss time, it was only 295 kilometers away from the surface of the planet. +Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox The flyby was intended to give the probe the necessary gravitational boost to enter an orbit around the innermost planet in our solar system in 2026. During the flyby, Bepicolombo passed the night side of Mercury and then switched to the sunlit side, as ESA explained in a statement before the flyby. According to the researchers involved in the mission, including scientists from the University of Bern, this offers a unique opportunity to study the permanently shadowed craters at Mercury's north pole. Managing in the shadow According to ESA, one of the biggest challenges during this flyby ...