It seems like it should be pretty easy to get to Mercury. The little rocky planet is so much closer to Earth than distant destinations like Jupiter, where we've successfully sent multiple spacecraft. Plus, it doesn't have a crushing atmosphere like our nearest neighbor Venus. But, in fact, it's actually really difficult to reach the innermost planet of our solar system--which makes it that much more impressive that the ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo mission has almost reached Mercury, recently completing its final flyby of the planet before entering orbit next year. Reaching Mercury is such a challenge because "the gravitational pull of the Sun is very strong near Mercury, which makes it difficult for spacecraft to slow down enough to enter orbit around the planet," explains Lina Hadid, staff scientist at CNRS in France and principal investigator of one of BepiColombo's instruments.

Fox News Flash top entertainment and celebrity headlines are here. Check out what's clicking today in entertainment. Bella Hadid is looking back on her time as a model. The 24-year-old star appeared on the cover of Vogue's September issue with several other young modeling stars and discussed what it was like for her when she kick-started her career. Hadid first found success when she was just 17 and said that she found it difficult to balance a public persona with her own personality.

Imagine you work for a UK bicycle manufacturer. As you assemble the bicycles, you sandblast the joints in the frame before painting them. You hold the frame against the sandblaster in a sealed box, holding it in place with industrial-strength gloves. But imagine if a robotic arm could do that job for you, one that you take straight out of a box and set up in a few hours, if not minutes? It then holds the frame in the sandblaster, relieving you of the task.