Astonishing New Images Show Venus Like You've Never Seen It Before - Yahoo Finance

The flyby follows last month's news of researchers discovering traces of the chemical compound phosphine, which is considered a biomarker on Earth, in the clouds that shroud Venus.

During the flyby, BepiColombo came within more than 6,000 miles of Venus, according to ESA.

The next flyby will take place in 2021 and will bring the spacecraft as close as 341 miles to the planet's surface.

The mission is a two-for-one deal: One orbiter, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), will map our solar system's innermost planet, while another, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio), will measure the planet's magnetosphere in detail

According to ESA, the spacecraft could be exposed to temperatures of up to 662 degrees Fahrenheit during its year-long orbit of the planet