A spacecraft has sent back some of the most detailed and breathtaking images of Mercury's north pole, shedding new light on the mysterious, shadowy regions of the small planet closest to the Sun.

New photos of Mercury's mysterious north pole reveal a glimpse of the permanently dark, frigid craters that may hold ice dozens of feet thick, even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.

(AP) — A spacecraft has beamed back some of the best close-up photos ... to Mercury in the 1970s and, two decades later, to the Italian Space Agency’s tethered satellite project that flew ...