Fifth Mercury flyby on 1 December 2024
Fifth Mercury flyby on 1 December 2024
The joint Mercury BepiColombo mission, from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), flew by its target for the fifth time on 1 December 2024 at a distance of 37,630 kilometre. The spacecraft is set to enter Mercury's orbit in November 2026. During this penultimate flyby, the spacecraft was 200 times further away from the planet than during its previous flyby, when it came within 165 kilometres of Mercury's surface. This fifth flyby is the first time the probe has used its Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (MERTIS) instrument, which measures the temperature and composition, providing information about the types of minerals found on Mercury's surface.
