A joint Japanese-European exploration program has photographed the surface of Mercury, the European Space Agency has announced.
The images were captured by an unmanned spacecraft launched as part of the BepiColombo exploration program jointly devised by the ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European agency said Saturday. Taken at locations including a position 1,410 kilometers away from Mercury, the black-and-white images clearly show numerous craters of various sizes.
The spacecraft contains two orbiters that will study the internal structure and atmospheric distribution of Mercury, and was launched from French Guiana, South America, in October 2018. This was the program's first close approach to Mercury since the launch.
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