Artist impression of the cruise configuration for the BepiColombo spacecraft. The Mercury Transfer Module is at the bottom, with the ion engines on and twin solar panels extended. The middle section is the MPO orbiter and the MIO orbiter is tucked inside the sunshield (credit: ESA/ATG medialab)

BepiColombo is set for science, as the spacecraft performs a Venus swing-by

MIO, MPO and MTM that form BepiColombo wish us all the very best as they fly-by the Earth (credit: ESA).

Ready for swing-by! BepiColombo will pass close to the Earth on April 10

(A) DCAM3 image of the ejecta created during the SCI impact, with four separate rays of material. (B) ONC optical image of the impact site, with numbers corresponding to the ejecta rays in (A). (C). Change in reflectivity before and after the SCI impact. Darker regions are thought to indicate material ejected from below the surface. (Figure 4 in Arakawa et al., Science 2020.)

Creating a crater to constrain the age of an asteroid’s surface

Temperature distribution over the shape model of asteroid Ryugu, using data taken by the Hayabusa2 TIR thermal imager on August 1, 2018 (Okada et al, Nature 2020).

Are primitive asteroids “fluffy”?

Is the history of Mars etched in the grains of its moons?

Artist impression of Dragonfly on the surface of Titan. (Johns Hopkins APL)

Measuring the waves through Titan: ISAS builds a seismometer for NASA’s Dragonfly mission

Microdroplets containing a fluorescent dye, showing the capability of microdroplets to act as primitive compartments (credit: Tony Jia, ELSI)

Building the first cells for the origins of life

Asteroid Ryugu from an altitude of 6km. Image was captured with the Optical Navigation Camera - Telescopic (ONC-T) on July 20, 2018. (JAXA, University of Tokyo, Kochi University, Rikkyo University, Nagoya University, Chiba Institute of Technology, Meiji University, University of Aizu, AIST.)

Hayabusa2: mapping Ryugu’s extraordinary past

Artist impression of the MMX spacecraft orbiting Phobos. Yellow indicates regions where cold flow is expected to be strongest (credit: Baresi, Ballouz, JAXA).

The Shifting Sands of Phobos

False colour image of the nightside of Venus captured with the IR2 camera on Akatsuki at 1.735-µm (blue) and 2.26-µm (red) and mix of the two (green). On the nightside of Venus, IR2 observes infrared light coming from the lower atmosphere through clouds, and the shadow of the clouds can be seen in the image. Here, bright and dark are reversed to show clouds in whitish colour.(Credit: JAXA / PLANET-C Project Team)

Akatsuki seeks the source of Venus’s extreme weather

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