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Lost in Space-Time

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n 2025 BepiColombo image1 Top three images from BepiColombo's sixth Mercury flyby 09/01/2025 619 views 4 likes ESA / Science & Exploration / Space Science / BepiColombo On 8 January 2025, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew past Mercury for the sixth time, successfully completing the final ?gravity assist manoeuvre? needed to steer it into orbit around the planet in late 2026. The spacecraft flew just a few hundred kilometres above the planet's north pole. Close-up images expose possibly icy craters whose floors are in permanent shadow, and the vast sunlit northern plains. At 06:59 CET, BepiColombo flew just 295 km above Mercury's surface on the planet's cold, dark night side. Around seven minutes later, it passed directly over the Mercury's north pole before getting clear views of the planet's sunlit north. European Space Agency (ESA) Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed the first image during his Annual Press Briefing on 9 January. As during BepiColombo's previous flybys, the spacecraft's monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) did not disappoint. This flyby also marks the last time that the mission's M-CAMs get up-close views of Mercury, as the spacecraft module they are attached to will separate from the mission's two orbiters ? ESA?s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA?s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter ? before they enter orbit around Mercury in late 2026. Celebrating the M-CAMs' final hurrah, let's explore the best three images from BepiColombo's sixth close encounter with the little planet, and what they reveal about mysterious Mercury.

Space

BepiColombo snaps Mercury's dark craters and volcanic plains

The BepiColombo spacecraft is due to start orbiting Mercury next year, but a recent flyby has captured breathtaking images of its pockmarked surface

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Ritual Sticks - Uncle Russell Mullett on the balcony of Cloggs Cave

Humans

Ancient humans understood the future and the past pretty much as we do

Comment

Mathematics

How a typo spoiled my proof of Fermat’s last theorem

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Mathematics

This mathematical trick lets you work out the weekday of any date

Regulars

How the covid-19 pandemic distorted our experience of time

Health

How the covid-19 pandemic distorted our experience of time

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Physics

Physicists in 2024 searched the quantum realm for the truth about time

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On 22 August 2024, summit staff reinstalled Rubin Observatory's commissioning camera (ComCam) on the telescope. ComCam has previously been on the telescope, but was removed before the installation of the secondary mirror in late July. ComCam ??? a smaller (144 megapixel), simpler version of the full 3200-megapixel LSST Camera ??? is being used for testing activities prior to installing the LSST Camera, anticipated to happen late 2024. In the coming weeks the summit team will install the primary/tertiary mirror, enabling ComCam to produce the first astronomical data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope.

Space

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory gets started next year. I can't wait

Comment

The Penguin and the compact elliptical galaxy the Egg

Space

The best space images from 2024

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James Webb Space Telescope : Pillars of creation

Video

2024 review: Stunning JWST images that reveal the beauty of space

Video

The wild physics that could actually be used to build a time machine

Physics

The wild physics that could actually be used to build a time machine

From warp drives to quantum tricks, here are five ways that physicists have figured out how to theoretically travel back in time

Features

Video

Why Kelly and Zach Weinersmith are sceptical about a future on Mars

Video

Space

How a space elevator could make trips to the moon affordable for all

Comment

Physics

These are the most mind-melting physics discoveries of 2024

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Space

Exoplanet plate tectonics: A new frontier in the hunt for alien life

Features

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