The new images of the planet Mercury

I present to you the new images of Planet Mercury made by the BepiColombo spacecraft. This is a joint mission of the European space agency and the Japanese space agency. The images were taken on June 23. During the pass, the spacecraft reached almost 200 km from the surface of the planet.

A similarity to the moon can be seen in the landscape of Mercury because it is also full of craters, this is because Mercury and the Moon are worlds with rocky surfaces and no atmosphere that serve as a shield against small asteroids, also both in the moon as in mercury there is no movement of tectonic plates that happens on earth and of course there are no erosion processes produced by wind and water, some processes that end up in the case of the earth renewing the surface and covering wearing away old impact craters.

Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system, it has a diameter of 4,879 kilometers, it is also the one that orbits closest to the sun at about 82 million kilometers, although it is not the hottest, that record is held by Venus with a temperature of + 463, 8 degrees Celsius on average while the average temperature of Mercury is + 166 degrees Celsius, but be careful with this average term because in the case of Mercury it is something very relative since, lacking the atmosphere, the thermal variations in Mercury are simply brutal During the day the temperature reaches +430 degrees Celsius and at night they plummet to -180 degrees Celsius.

But there are areas where the sun's rays never reach, as in certain polar craters of Mercury, we can find water ice that is supposed to come from comets caused by the planet.

Another characteristic that makes it special is its huge metallic core. It is believed that 70% of Mercury is metal and 30% would be silicates, that is, the fundamental material that makes up rocks.

Geologists estimate that the mercury core occupies 42% of its total volume and that is a lot, for example, the core of the earth barely occupies 17%. In addition, the mercury core is estimated to be partially molten, which would explain the magnetic field of this planet.

Getting to Mercury is extremely difficult since it is the fastest planet in the solar system, it travels at 47.8 kilometers per second, for example, the earth does it at 29.7 kilometers per second, the BepiColombo spacecraft to reach Mercury will have to use seven years since it was launched on October 20, 2018 and I will have to make a flyby of the earth, 2 flybys of Venus and 6 flybys of Mercury in order to achieve the necessary gravitational thrust to reach the planet on December 5, 2025, At that time, the two components of the mission will be separated: on the one hand, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter weighing about 1,140 kilograms, which will be the one to explore the surface, and on the other, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, which is smaller, weighing about 288 kilograms. kilograms and will be in charge, as its name indicates, of studying the Mercury magnetosphere.

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