A spacecraft recently sent back some of the best close-up pictures yet of the planet Mercury's north pole.
一艘航天器最近发回了一些迄今为止最近的水星北极特写照片。
The European and Japanese robotic explorer went as close as 295 kilometers above Mercury's night side before passing directly over the planet's north pole.
欧洲和日本的机器人探测器在直接经过水星北极之前,曾接近水星夜侧上空295公里。
The European Space Agency (ESA) released images that show craters with deep shadows on our solar system's smallest planet.
欧洲航天局(ESA)发布的图像显示,太阳系最小的行星上有深阴影的陨石坑。
ESA noted that the edges, or rims, of the craters called Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer create permanent shadows.
ESA指出,被称为普罗科菲耶夫、康定斯基、托尔金和戈迪默的陨石坑的边缘会产生永久的阴影。
As a result, these unlit craters are some of the coldest places in the Solar System even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.
因此,尽管水星是离太阳最近的行星,但这些未被照亮的陨石坑是太阳系中最冷的地方之一。
Cameras also took images of neighboring volcanic plains known as Borealis Planitia.
摄像机还拍摄了邻近火山平原(北极光平原)的图像。
ESA noted that these are "Mercury's largest expanse of smooth plains and were formed by the widespread eruption of…lava 3.7 billion years ago."
ESA指出,这些是“水星上最大的平坦平原,是37亿年前熔岩大范围喷发形成的。”
Also appearing in the images released by ESA is Mercury's largest impact crater, the Caloris Basin, which covers more than 1,500 kilometers.
ESA发布的图像中还出现了水星最大的撞击坑卡洛里斯盆地,面积超过1500公里。
This was the sixth and final flyby of Mercury for the BepiColombo spacecraft since its launch in 2018.
这是比皮科伦坡号航天器自2018年发射以来第六次也是最后一次飞越水星。
The recent move put the spacecraft on a path to enter orbit around Mercury late next year.
最近的这一举动使该航天器走上了明年晚些时候进入水星轨道的道路。
The spacecraft holds two orbiters, one from Europe and the other from Japan, that will circle the planet's poles.
该航天器载有两个轨道飞行器,一个来自欧洲,另一个来自日本,它们将环绕地球的两极。
In a statement on its website, ESA noted that Mercury, a small, dry planet, is "the least explored planet of the inner Solar System.
ESA在其网站上的一份声明中指出,水星是一颗干燥的小行星,是“内太阳系中探索最少的行星”。
Learning more about Mercury will shed light on the history of the entire Solar System."
了解更多关于水星的信息将有助于了解整个太阳系的历史。”
The spacecraft is named for the late Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, an Italian mathematician.
该航天器以已故意大利数学家朱塞佩(Bepi)科伦坡的名字命名。
Colombo played a part in NASA's Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s
20世纪70年代,科伦坡在美国宇航局的水手10号水星任务中发挥了作用,
and 20 years later, in the Italian Space Agency's special satellite project that flew on the U.S. Space Shuttle.