BepiColombo Reveals Mercury's Shadowy North Pole
2025-01-10
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission's sixth and final Mercury flyby yielded stunning images of the planet's north pole, captured by the Monitoring Camera 1 (M-CAM 1). The long-exposure photo reveals permanently shadowed craters, potentially the coldest places in the Solar System and possible locations of water ice. The image also showcases Borealis Planitia, vast volcanic plains comparable in scale to Earth's mass extinction-level volcanic events. This flyby provides crucial data for BepiColombo's future orbital studies of Mercury.