The BepiColombo spacecraft flew past Mercury for the fifth time last week, revealing the planet in mid-infrared light for the first time. The images reveal details of the temperature and composition of the planet closest to the Sun.
BepiColombo was launched in October 2018 and is scheduled to arrive at Mercury in November 2026, about a year later than originally planned. BepiColombo released its closest flyby and fourth gravity helper of Mercury in early September, and now, the spacecraft’s fifth flyby of Earth has revealed new data about the planet’s hot, day, cold night.
The spacecraft collected new data on Mercury using the Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer, or MERTIS. The instrument captured details of Mercury at mid- and infrared wavelengths, where details of the planet’s surface temperatures, roughness, and mineral composition are visible.
“After nearly two decades of development, laboratory measurements of hot rocks like those on Mercury and countless tests of all the sequences of the mission’s time, the first MERTIS data from Mercury are now available,” said Jörn Helbert, who helped develop it. instrument as its principal investigator at the German Aerospace Center, in the release of the ESA. “Very sweet!”
The images show Bashō Crater, the most influential crater ever seen by Mariner 10 and the Messenger missions. In visible light, the crater appears as a relatively exposed pockmark on the planet’s surface. It is also visible at mid- and infrared wavelengths.
“The moment we started looking at the MERTIS flight data and were able to quickly distinguish the impact craters was amazing,” said Solmaz Adeli, a researcher at the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Planetary Research, in the same release. “There is much to be discovered from this dataset – features never before seen in this way await us.”
“We have never been so close to understanding the global surface mineralogy of Mercury with MERTIS suitable for the BepiColombo orbital stage,” said Adeli.
MERTIS data showed Mercury’s surface to be 788° Fahrenheit (420° Celsius) during the flyby. Examining various minerals in a lab setting and seeing how they glow at mid- and infrared wavelengths can reveal exactly what chemical cocktail exists in the subsurface.
Although BepiColombo’s arrival in Mercury’s orbit has been delayed, recent observations offer a glimpse of the up-close-and-personal view scientists will have in two years.
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