Mercury probe and sun spacecraft provide new info about Venus

Space exploration missions always have a planned destination, but sometimes they swing by other planets on the way. 
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, give astronomers a rare glimpse into the workings of Venus' magnetic field.
"BepiColombo had a perfect view of the different regions within the magnetosheath and magnetosphere," said University of Tokyo astronomer Moa Persson, lead author on the new study, in a press release. 
Chance encounters: Mercury probe and sun spacecraft provide new info about Venus