Chance encounters: Mercury probe and sun spacecraft provide new info about Venus
Two probes — BepiColombo, headed to Mercury, and Solar Orbiter, en route to the sun — recently passed by Venus at nearly the same time, visiting Earth’s sister planet within a day of each other in August 2021. Their combined observations, recently published in the journal Nature Communications (opens in new tab), give astronomers a rare glimpse into the workings of Venus’ magnetic field.