Key moments during BepiColombo’s first Mercury flyby on 1 October 2021, which will see the spacecraft pass within 200 km of the planet at 23:34 UTC.
While many of the in situ instruments will be on and collecting data as usual, two of BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras will also be activated shortly after close approach. The images will be downlinked later in the morning of 2 October.
Not to scale: the relative sizes of planets and spacecraft, and the attitude of the spacecraft is not representative.