This is CBS, I On the World Behind the Black. Bob Zimmerman is here to take us exploring. I'm John

Batchel. Bob Mercury. Beppe Colombo, what is the mission? Bebe Colombo completed its last flyby of

Mercury a few days ago. It dropped down to under 200 miles of the surface.

It dipped across the North Pole of Mercury in doing so.

And it is now prepared to enter orbit of Mercury in late of 26.

When it does so, Beppo Colombo will then split into two different orbiters,

one put together by the European

Space Agency, and the other put together by Japan's space agency, Jaxa.

And those two spacecraft will take on complementary orbits around Mercury to study the planet.

To get there, it's complicated.

The orbital mechanics are difficult. It takes a lot of energy to get there it's complicated the uh... the orbital mechanics are difficult

it takes a lot of energy to get into mercury from earth

because being close to the sun and so

uh... it's taken a long time with a lot of flyby so they completed this last flyby

of mercury this week and they released a bunch of pictures they took pictures

uh... i posted what i think is the most interesting picture on Behind the Black.

It's a picture of the terminated near the North Pole of Mercury.

And there's a line of craters there, all of which are thought to have permanently shadowed interiors.

And there is some evidence that suggests there might be water in them, or at least as

evidence of hydrogen, which does suggest the possibility of water.

And so this is a similar issue as with the moon.

Even though it's the closest to the sun and therefore the hottest planet,

...