At 06:59 Central During Europe on January 8, the BepiColombo spacecraft successfully made its sixth flyby of Mercury, the innermost planet of the solar system. This is a “gravity assist maneuver,” a move that uses Mercury’s gravitational pull to change the course of the BepiColombo vehicle, which will bring it into orbit around the planet by the end of 2026.

BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to study the composition of Mercury. The vehicle, consisting of two probes — ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter — was launched in the fall of 2018 and previously orbited the sun.

When it approaches Mercury again, the vehicle will separate, and the two probes will go into their dedicated polar orbits. BepiColombo’s scientific work is scheduled for early 2027, when the probes will look for information on how the planet was formed and if some of its craters contain water in the form of ice.

Until then, we have to make do with the details contained in these three images taken of the vehicle during its latest flyby.