After nearly eight years and billions of kilometers of travel, bepicolombo A science mission led by ESA in close collaboration with JAXA has begun its long-awaited arrival to the smallest and innermost planet in our solar system.
Artist’s impression of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft in cruise configuration with Mercury in the background. On its 7.2-year journey to the innermost planet, BepiColombo will fly around Earth once, Venus twice and Mercury six times before entering orbit. The MTM module fires ion thrusters and is shown with solar wings spread approximately 100 feet (30 m) from tip to tip. At the center, the MPO orbiter’s 7.5 m (24.6 ft) long solar array can be seen extending to the top. The Mio Orbiter is hidden inside the sunshield in this orientation. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / NASA / JPL.
BepiColombo was launched from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on October 20, 2018.
This is the first European mission to Mercury and the first to send two spacecraft to simultaneously take complementary measurements of Mercury and its dynamic environment.
It consists of two separate orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO, or “Mio”).
BepiColombo is named after Italian mathematician and engineer Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo.
Professor Colombo was the first to discover that an unexpected resonance is responsible for Mercury’s habit of rotating three times for every two revolutions it makes around the sun.
He also suggested to NASA that a swing-by using Venus’ gravity could be used to place the Mariner 10 spacecraft in solar orbit, allowing it to fly by Mercury three times in 1974 and 1975.
On September 3, 2026, mission controllers confirmed that the spacecraft’s Mercury Transport Module (MTM) had successfully separated from the rest of the stack, beginning the “arrival phase” of the mission.
Confirmation was carried out through two of ESA’s deep space tracking antennas in Spain and Argentina, which received signals proving the separation.
Telemetry showed that all systems were functioning properly and that MPO’s solar panels were already charging the spacecraft’s batteries.
This exercise was a high-stakes gamble. It took place more than 200 million kilometers from Earth, a distance that precluded real-time troubleshooting and required careful advance planning by the mission team.
With the transfer module gone, the MPO and Mio orbiters are now heading into orbit around Mercury, with MPO providing power to the coupled spacecraft until the two orbiters separate from each other.
“The arrival phase will begin with the separation of MTM from the spacecraft stack on September 3, 2026,” BepiColombo team members said in a statement.
“The combined spacecraft will enter orbit around Mercury on November 21, 2026, and MPO and MIO are scheduled to separate on December 9-10, 2026.”
“The science phase of the mission is scheduled to begin in April 2027.”
Source: www.sci.news
