1️⃣ Space near Mercury is HOT. Sending a spacecraft there is a bit like asking a laptop to work inside a hot pizza oven! Some spacecraft have gotten close to Mercury but none have remained in this scorching heat continuously. This means we still don’t have high-resolution data covering Mercury’s entire surface.
2️⃣ It’s difficult to observe from Earth: Because Mercury is very close to the Sun, when we try to look at it from Earth, it’s often lost in the Sun’s glare.
3️⃣ It’s hard to reach: Mercury is not that far, but according to some estimates, it would take less energy to get to Pluto than to get to Mercury. The Sun’s strong gravitational pull means that spacecraft need to use a lot of energy to slow down enough to orbit Mercury.
But our BepiColombo mission, will help us learn a lot more about Mercury when it enters into orbit in 2026! It’s the most advanced spacecraft ever sent to Mercury. It will help us answer many questions, such as: Why is there ice in the polar craters of the scorched planet? And what are the mysterious ‘hollows’ on its surface?
📹 ESA – European Space Agency
📸 ESA/NASA
#ESA #Mercury #BepiColombo
