The flyby took Europe's BepiColombo spacecraft within 150 miles (240 kilometers) of Mercury's surface.
to slow itself down enough to be able to move from the sun's orbit to that of Mercury in late 2025.
The European Space Agency released the first of these new images on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after the closest approach, which took place on Monday at 3:34 p.m. EDT . "During our image planning for the flyby, we realized this large crater would be in view, but it didn't yet have a name," David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the UK's Open University and a member of the BepiColombo science imaging team, said in an ESA."It will clearly be of interest for BepiColombo scientists in the future, because it has excavated dark 'low-reflectance material' that may be remnants of Mercury's early carbon-rich crust.
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