The European Space Agency (ESA) has published several images of Mercury taken by the BepiColombo spacecraft. They show the planet’s North Pole and vast lava plains.
On January 8, 2025, BepiColombo made its sixth close approach to Mercury, flying just 295 km above its surface. Selfie cameras mounted aboard the spacecraft took a number of photos of the planet. ESA has published three of the most spectacular of them.
The first photo shows the north pole of the planet. We can see the craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer. A key feature of these shock formations is that their bottoms are never illuminated by the Sun, making them some of the coldest places in the Solar System. Surprisingly, there is evidence that these craters contain deposits of ice. Whether Mercury really has water is one of the key mysteries of the planet for BepiColombo to explore.
The second photo shows Mercury’s vast northern plains. They were formed during large-scale eruptions that took place 3.7 billion years ago. Huge flows flooded the craters that existed then. Later, the plains were covered with smaller craters, as well as “wrinkles” formed as a result of the planet’s compression caused by the cooling of its interior.
In the lower left of the image is the massive Caloris Planitia. It is Mercury’s largest impact crater at more than 1,500 kilometers long. The impact shredded the planet’s surface for thousands of kilometers, as evidenced by the linear depressions diverging from it.
The third image shows a bright spot near the upper edge of the planet. This is Nathair Facula, in the center of which there is a volcanic vent with a diameter of about 40 km. It has been the site of at least three major eruptions. The volcanic deposits around Facula are at least 300 kilometers in diameter. Their brightness indicates the relative geologic youth of this formation.
These are the latest close-up images of Mercury taken by the BepiColombo selfie cameras. After BepiColombo enters a permanent orbit around the planet in November 2026, it will separate into two vehicles: the European MPO and the Japanese MMO. The cameras aboard MPO will be able to take much more detailed and clearer pictures of Mercury, which will shed light on many of its mysteries.
According to ESA
