The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury’s night side before passing directly over the planet’s north pole. The European Space Agency released the stunning snapshots Thursday, showing the permanently shadowed craters at the top of of our solar system’s smallest, innermost planet.

A spacecraft has captured detailed images of Mercury's north pole, shedding new light on the mysterious side of 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. The European Space Agency (ESA) published the photos as part of BepiColombo,

A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos ever of Mercury’s north pole. The European and Japanese robotic explorer swooped as close as 183 miles (295 kilometers) above Mercury before passing directly over the planet's north pole.

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,

Within those shadows, it's thought, sits a layer of ice, preserving clues that could help us better understand Mercury's past and potentially its future. "In the next few weeks, the BepiColombo team will work hard to unravel as many of Mercury's mysteries with the data from this flyby as we can,

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.