BepiColombo's Sixth Mercury Flyby

On January 8, 2025, the European Space Agency (ESA) marked another milestone in its ambitious BepiColombo mission with the sixth and final flyby of Mercury before the spacecraft’s orbital insertion in 2026. This momentous event provided unprecedented insights into the enigmatic planet closest to the Sun, capturing detailed images and paving the way for groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

Highlights of the Flyby

1. Stunning Close-up Images: The flyby yielded spectacular images of Mercury’s northern pole, including craters in permanent shadow that could potentially harbor water ice. These captivating visuals not only showcase Mercury’s stark beauty but also offer tantalizing clues about its composition and history.

2. Landscapes Sculpted by Catastrophe: The images revealed two distinct geological features:

Borealis Planitia: Vast volcanic plains formed by ancient lava flows approximately 3.7 billion years ago.

Caloris Basin: The largest impact crater on Mercury, a testament to the planet’s violent past.

3. Youthful and Bright Features: Mercury’s younger formations, such as the Fonteyn Crater and Nathair Facula—the result of massive volcanic explosions—appear noticeably brighter than the surrounding terrain. These features serve as windows into the planet’s more recent geological activity.

The Road Ahead

With its final gravity-assist maneuver complete, BepiColombo’s dual orbiters, the ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, are set to begin their in-depth study of Mercury in late 2026. These orbiters will:

Analyze Mercury’s surface composition to uncover its origins and evolution.

Investigate whether water ice exists in the planet’s permanently shadowed craters.

Solve mysteries about the planet’s volcanic past, such as the direction of lava flows within the Caloris Basin.

As ESA noted, this flyby marked the last opportunity for the mission’s M-CAM cameras to capture close-up images, as the spacecraft’s module carrying these cameras will separate before orbital insertion.

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