Nowadays, there is not much talk about Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, and astronomers are not particularly interested either, since there were only two NASA missions, but now the European Space Agency and JAXA BepiColombo are taking a closer look at the planet, which has also received some recent photos.
JAXA and ESA’s collaboration with BepiColombo revolves around studying the planet and finding out why Mercury continues to shrink. There are a number of plausible explanations for the shrinkage, the most common being that the planet’s core is cooling and thus being sucked up by the crust, but with the probe they hope to produce more advanced maps of the planet’s surface.
The three black and white photos were just taken Mercury appears in more detail than ever beforeAlthough the recordings are unfortunately relatively small, James Webb tends to produce much larger recordings. It is Mercury’s proximity to the Sun that has made studying the planet difficult, as the reflectivity and heat of our star are two of the main competitors for probes to contend with in this field. In the future, JAXA and ESA aim to put modules into orbit around Mercury, which likely won’t happen until 2026.
