BepiColombo captured this view of Venus on October 15, 2020 with the surveillance camera 2 of the Mercury Transfer Module when the spaceship passed the planet for a maneuver in support of gravity. Photo credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Venus on October 15, 2020, when the spaceship passed the planet for a gravity-assist maneuver.
The image was taken at 03:37 UTC by surveillance camera 2 of the Mercury Transfer Module, shortly before the closest approach at 03:58 UTC. The medium gain antenna of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter is visible at the top of the picture, along with the magnetometer boom extending from the top right of the frame. At the time of the acquisition, the spaceship was within 14,000 km of Venus.
The cameras deliver black and white snapshots with a resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels. The image has been slightly processed to improve brightness and contrast.
The maneuver, the first at Venus and the second of a total of nine flybys, helped steer the spaceship on course for Mercury. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet in the solar system, BepiColombo flies past once on Earth, two on Venus and six on Mercury in order to brake against the gravitational pull of the sun and to enter orbit around Mercury. BepiColombo, consisting of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter from ESA and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is expected to reach its target orbit around the smallest and innermost planet in the solar system in 2025.
