BepiColombo – a joint mission of Europe and Japan – successfully passed Earth last night and is now headed toward the innermost part of the solar system. Here are some questions about our sun’s innermost planet, Mercury, the spacecraft is expected to answer. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/top-5-mercury-mysteries-that-bepicolombo-will-solve…
Tag: Mariner 10
Was Mercury once habitable?
As unlikely as it may sound, Mercury may have once been able to support subsurface microscopic life, according to a new study from the Planetary Science Institute. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/mercury-habitability-chaotic-terrain-messenger-astrobiology…
Exploring Mercury in a new book
Up until 2008, only one spacecraft had ever visited the planet Mercury, and it didn’t linger long. NASA’s Mariner 10 mission flew past the tiny world three times in the 1970s, giving humanity a helpful but limited glimpse of the solar system’s innermost planet. Mariner 10 imaged about 45 percent of Mercury’s surface and discovered its internal magnetic field, among other things.
