Plenty of news stories have focused on the danger posed by Kessler syndrome. In this condition, space is made inaccessible by a cloud of debris surrounding our planet that would destroy any further attempts to get into orbit. Therefore, plenty of companies have sprung up to take care of the problem, from blasting derelict satellites with lasers to helping to refuel them—lots of business models have been created to capture this opportunity.

One of the farthest along is Astroscale. This British start-up is tackling the problem with one of the more conventional techniques—linking up with an existing satellite to deorbit it. And recently, they released a promotional video for their new project—the ELSA-M.

ELSA-M, which stands for End of Life Services by Astroscale-Multiple, is designed to couple with an existing satellite, force it into a lower orbit, and make it reenter more quickly. It will be the first satellite to boost itself up to another orbit for a second rendezvous and deorbit that second satellite as well.

Watch Mercury appear from the shadows as the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft sped by the planet's night side during its 19 June 2023 close flyby, and enjoy a special flyover of geologically rich terrain.

In the first part of the movie, composed of 217 images captured by BepiColombo's monitoring camera M-CAM 3, the planet's illuminated side quickly appears in the spacecraft's field of view, showing off a bounty of geological features on its surface. The planet's terminator—the divide between day and night—becomes more distinctive from afar, adding to the beauty of the image sequence. At one point Mercury momentarily appears to hang between the spacecraft's body and antenna before the spacecraft speeds away.

The image sequence starts from 19:46:25 UTC on 19 June 2023, at an altitude of 1,789 km above the planet's surface, and ends at 20:34:25 UTC on 20 June 2023, when BepiColombo was 331,755 km away.