Stunning detailed images of Mercury have been clicked by BepiColombo as it made its sixth and final flyby over the closest planet to Sun.
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Barely larger than our own Moon, Mercury orbits precariously close to the Sun at an average distance of roughly 58 million kilometres.
Image: Unsplash
The spacecraft flew just a few hundred kilometres above the planet's north pole capturing the "icy craters and the vast sunlit northern plains".
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The images were revealed during a press briefing by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
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Sunlit rims cast permanent shadows on the floor of several craters seen here, making them some of the coldest places in the Solar System.
Image: ESA
This image shows that large regions of Mercury's heavily cratered surface are smoothed over by lava from volcanic eruptions.
Image: ESA
The bright patch near the planet's upper edge in this image taken by M-CAM 2 is the Nathair Facula, the aftermath of the largest volcanic explosion on Mercury.
Image: ESA
Whether there really is water on the planet will be investigated by BepiColombo once it is in orbit around the planet.
Image: ESA
Two years from now, the BepiColombo's Module will return to Mercury to release ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.