A European-Japanese spacecraft set off on a treacherous seven-year journey to Mercury on Saturday, Oct. 20 to probe the solar system’s smallest and least-explored planet.
The BepiColombo mission, only the third ever to visit Mercury, blasted off from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket at 10:45 p.m. local time on Oct. 19, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
