BepiColombo, the British-built spacecraft destined for Mercury, has taken a selfie from space after launching successfully at the weekend.
The image was snapped by an on-board camera and captured the eternal abyss of space alongside the body of BepiColombo.
Extending along the right-hand side of the image is the spacecraft's extended solar arrays and visible in the bottom left of the picture is a sun sensor.
BepiColombo is hurtling towards the closest planet to the sun via four Star Trek-style 'impulse engines' that create electrically charged - or ionised - xenon atoms.
It successfully launched from the
space port at Kourou in French Guiana at 2:45am UK-time on Saturday.
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The view looks along one of the extended solar arrays (right) as the spacecraft begins its journey to Mercury.
The structure in the bottom left corner is one of the sun sensors on the MTM, with the multi-layered insulation clearly visible
The image was shared by the European Space Agency (ESA) and titled 'BepiColombo's first image from space'.
The ESA said: 'The transfer module is equipped with three monitoring cameras, which provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution.
'The other two cameras will be activated tomorrow.'
Future images from the spacecraft will show the deployed medium- and high-gain antennas on-board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), the space agency revealed.
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These cameras will be used during the flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury during BepiColombo's seven year trip across five billion miles (8.5 kilometres) of space.
BepiColombo's journey will include a fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself before arriving at its dest
mpo slot gacor) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
The former will study the planet's magnetic field as well as its interactions with the sun and latter will map Mercury in great detail.
'It has a fantastic sequence of instruments on it,' Timothy Yeoman,
professor of physics at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, told