BepiColombo, a European mission, will swing past Mercury on January 8, passing well inside the planet’s magnetic field. This illustration shows the encounter from two angles, with the planet’s magnetic ‘bubble’ indicated in dark red and purple, and the stream of the solar wind–charged particles from the Sun–in orange and yellow. The panel at left shows the encounter from above Mercury’s north pole, while the other shows it as seen from the Sun. The probe will study the interaction of the solar wind and the magnetic field, while using Mercury’s gravity to refine its orbit around the Sun. BepiColombo is scheduled to enter orbit around Mercury, the Sun’s closest planet, late next year. [Willi Exner/ESA & TU Braunschweig]
Find out more in our radio program entitled Mercury Flyby.