The spacecraft BepiColombo, a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan's space agency JAXA, flew by Venus on its way to Mercury.
Earlier this week, while performing a "gravity assist maneuver," BepiColombo took a snapshot of Venus in black and white. The spacecraft was 1,573 km (977 miles) away from the planet - at its closest, the spacecraft was just 552 km (342 miles) away.
In the photo, you can see the high-gain antenna on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter at the top-left corner of the image.
If you're wondering about the name, BepiColombo is named after Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo (1920 - 1984), a scientist at the University of Padua, Italy, who first suggested the gravity assist maneuver.
Image: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM
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