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BepiColombo is an international mission comprised of two spacecraft riding together to Mercury to orbit and to study the planet from unique vantage points.
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BepiColombo is an international mission comprised of two spacecraft riding together to Mercury to orbit and to study the planet from unique vantage points. The European Space Agency (ESA) provided one orbiter. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) supplied the second orbiter.
Oct. 20, 2018 | 01:45:28 UT: Launch
April 13, 2020: Earth flyby
Oct. 16, 2020: Venus flyby
Aug. 11, 2020: Venus Flyby
Oct. 1, 2021: First Mercury flyby
June 23, 2022: Mercury flyby
June 20, 2023: Mercury flyby
Sept. 5, 2024: Mercury flyby
Dec. 2, 2024: Mercury flyby
Jan. 9, 2025: Mercury flyby
Dec. 5, 2025: Mercury orbital insertion
BepiColombo is a joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury to study the planet’s composition, geophysics, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and history.
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) each have an orbiter on the same spacecraft.
ESA built the main spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), and JAXA supplied the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MIO).
MPO will study the surface and internal composition of the planet, and MIO will study Mercury’s magnetosphere – the region of space around the planet that is dominated by its magnetic field.
BepiColombo made its first flyby of Mercury on Oct. 1, 2021, and sent back several images. Several more planetary flybys will be used to steer BepiColombo into orbit around Mercury in December 2025.
A few months before going into orbit, BepiColombo will jettison the spacecraft’s transfer module leaving the two orbiters – still connected to each other – to be captured by Mercury’s gravity.
Both orbiters are expected to operate for about one year.
BepiColombo is only the third spacecraft to visit Mercury. NASA’s Mariner 10 flew past Mercury three times in 1974-1975 and returned the first close-up images of the planet.
NASA’s MESSENGER orbited Mercury for more than four years from Aug. 3, 2004, to April 30, 2015. The mission determined Mercury’s surface composition, revealed its geological history, discovered details about its internal magnetic field, and verified its polar deposits are dominantly water-ice. The mission ended when MESSENGER ran out of fuel and slammed into Mercury’s surface.
BepiColombo is named after Professor Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo (1920-1984) from the University of Padua, Italy, a mathematician and engineer. He was the first to determine that an unsuspected resonance is responsible for Mercury’s habit of rotating on its axis three times for every two revolutions it makes around the Sun.
European Space Agency: BepiColombo
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency: BepiColombo
National Space Science Data Center Master Catalog: BepiColombo
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