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 ...

Previous missions have visited Mercury, but it remains an enigmatic planet. NASA’s Mariner 10 and Messenger spacecraft both checked out Mercury. Mariner 10 flew by Mercury in the 1970s while ...

The spacecraft is named for the late Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, a 20th-century Italian mathematician who contributed to NASA's Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s and, two decades later ...

Credit: European Space Agency via AP The spacecraft is named for the late Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, a 20th-century Italian mathematician who contributed to NASA's Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in ...

The joint European-Japanese mission is only the second survey of Mercury, the least explored planet in the inner solar system.