The BepiColombo spacecraft has sent back some incredibly detailed images of Mercury’s north pole. The snapshots were collected during its closest ever flyby of our solar system’s smallest planet. You can check out the awe-inspiring images below.

The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft achieved a monumental milestone on January 8, 2025, with its sixth and final flyby of Mercury. This maneuver brought the spacecraft to just 185 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury’s surface,

New images of the planet Mercury taken by a robotic spacecraft have just been released — and they show the scorched world in fascinating up-close detail.

A spacecraft making its final flyby of Mercury has captured incredible images. BepiColombo spacecraft made its sixth pass of the closest planet to the sun on Jan. 8. It flew just a few hundred kilometers above the planet's surface, revealing views of both icy craters and the sunlight north pole.

Stevenage-built BepiColombo makes final flyby of Mercury ahead of entering the plant's orbit in 2026.

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, residing just 36 million miles from our Solar System’s center. However, not too far above its surface, the European Space Agency’s BepiColombo probe has taken the most detailed photos of the first planet ever.

For BepiColombo, 2024 was a turbulent year. The mission is a joint project by the European and Japanese Space Agencies – ESA and JAXA – and a thruster problem forced the ground team to change plans for the probe's arrival into orbit around Mercury.

The BepiColombo flew just 183 miles above the planet's surface on its sixth and final flyby before going into orbit next year

This is the third time a spacecraft has visited Mercury in the history of space exploration. BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras snapped detailed black-and-white photographs as it drifted just 295km above the innermost planet.