In the early hours of this morning, the BepiColombo spacecraft swung past Earth on its way to the inner Solar System – and in the process captured some rather glorious views of our planet.
The joint European-Japanese mission, which comprises two orbiters carried by Europe’s Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), is on a seven-year mission to enter orbit around Mercury in December 2025, having launched form Earth in October 2018.
In order to reach Mercury, the spacecraft must lose energy as it falls towards the Sun so it can be captured into orbit by the planet. To do so, it is using gravitational tugs of Earth, Venus, and Mercury itself to slow its speed as it flies past.
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