Image: The Messenger spacecraft's seven science instruments during the more than four-year orbital mission mapped the topography of Mercury's northern hemisphere in great detail. The view shows a colored relief map. Lower regions are shown in purple and higher regions are shown in red. The altitude difference between the lowest and highest regions shown here is about 10 kilometers! Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington.
There have only been three space probes that have been sent to the planet Mercury:
• The American probe Mariner 10, launched in November 1973, made three flybys of Mercury in March 1974, September 1974 and March 1975. It has mapped around 45% of Mercury's surface and provided important data on the composition of its atmosphere, geological structure, magnetosphere and magnetic field.
• The Messenger mission, launched in 2004 also by NASA. It was the first mission to enter orbit around Mercury, in 2011. Messenger mapped the entire surface of the planet, made measurements of the composition of its soil, atmosphere, magnetic field and internal structure, as well as past volcanic activity.
• The European-Japanese probe BepiColombo, launched in October 2018, is currently en route to Mercury. The two orbiters that make up the mission are scheduled to orbit Mercury in December 2025. It is made up of two main modules: an MPO orbiter (ESA) and an MMO transfer module (JAXA). The third module, the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) whose prime contractor is the European Space Agency, supports the propulsion of the MPO and MMO modules to Mercury's orbit. BepiColombo should help to better understand the composition of Mercury, its formation and its evolution, as well as its exosphere (the outermost layer of the atmosphere of a celestial body).
Low Earth Orbits and their uses
Pioneer, first message to extraterrestrials !
How to see infrared images from JWST?
Sputnik, the Russian companion
Envisat, the eye high-resolution of the Earth
Lagrange points
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Kepler space telescope in search of life
Our satellites also observe eclipses
Satellite laser ranging - LAGEOS-1
High-risk landing for Curiosity in 2012
Cheops, characteristics of exoplanets
The world of Planck
Rosetta or rendezvous with a comet
Satellites that measure underwater relief
Adaptive optics and laser star
Flyover of Mercury by MESSENGER
The orbital waltz of GPS satellites
ISS in low Earth orbit at 415 km altitude
Voyager 1 leaves us without looking back
Space telescopes are the eyes of the Earth
What is a space probe?
JWST in the depths of space
The GAIA satellite maps the Milky Way
How to calculate the synchronous orbit?
Modern cathedrals
Space debris are increasing exponentially
New image of ocean salinity
The End of the Dark Ages with JWST
Orbits of celestial objects (Apsis)
Even finer images for METEOSAT
Curiosity, the first shovel, sample of Martian soil
Probes of Mars
Living on the planet Mars
Where is the geostationary orbit?
MOM, the technological demonstration
Venus probes
What is an interferometer?