A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos yet of Mercury's north pole. The European and Japanese robotic explorer buzzed the planet's polar region Wednesday. The European

The BepiColombo satellite, in orbit around Mercury, photographed the rocky world's north pole for the first time up close. I hope you like craters and stark shadows. This is one of a series of images taken by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission on 8 January 2025 as the spacecraft sped by for its sixth and final gravity assist manoeuvre at the planet.

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.