Browsing: BepiColombo

The BepiColombo mission cleared a major milestone this week in the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to Mercury, the hard-to-reach, scorching hot iron world at the Solar System’s innermost frontier.

Eight years after it left Earth, BepiColombo is now tantalisingly close to entering orbit around Mercury, a hot and dense ball of metals and silicates with its own magnetic field, considered one of the most difficult planets to observe because the gravitational pull and wild radiation from the Sun are so intense.