The program called BepiColombo is a joint mission between the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) that was first launched on its convoluted and difficult journey to Mercury in October of 2018. Today, the spacecraft, consisting of three separate modules, began preparing for its final arrival at Mercury today, at around 8AM EDT. This diagram shows the major events and their dates over the next seven months.
UPDATE for Sept. 3: BepiColombo mission to Mercury successfully began its arrival sequence at the innermost planet with two spacecraft, one from Europe and the other from Japan, separating from its Mercury Transport Module.
The confirmation that the first (leftmost) step in this series of major steps succeeded wasn't communicated back by BepiColombo until closer to 10:00AM EDT - two hours after the maneuver was scheduled.
Mercury holds the dubious honor of being the least explored planet of the solar system inside the orbit of Saturn. Only Uranus, Neptune and Pluto have had fewer satellites monitoring them (one visit to each planet). Mercury had Mariner 10 making a three flybys between 1974 and 1975, and vastly increasing our knowledge of the smallest planet in the solar system. The next visitor was almost 40 years later when NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft arrived in 2011. Both the Mariner and MESSENGER missions dramatically improved our knowledge of the little planet, but they also had strong points and weak points - meaning there were gaps in this knowledge, too.
As you can tell in the mission plan or schedule above, by March, the two BepiColombo modules will be orbiting Mercury and getting ready to start gathering data.
Europe's Mercury Planetary Orbiter, or MPO, will focus on the planet proper. It's packed with 11 science instruments that will map the terrain, minerals in the crust, and the gravity field, investigate the hollows and volcanic deposits, and observe how the barrage of charged particles from the sun affects this innermost planet.
Japan's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, or Mio, meanwhile, will focus on the planet's surroundings — its magnetosphere and wispy atmosphere, as well as the dust cluttering up its neighborhood.
After eight years to get to this point, the researchers are excited about being this close to actually getting the data they've been working toward getting. Space.com has several articles on this mission and the milestone they accomplished today. The articles seem to overlap, and quite a bit in some places. If this is your kind of stuff, you might find it worthwhile to go read.
- https://www.space.com/astronomy/mercury/2-spacecraft-will-soon-reach-mercury-after-8-years-in-space-heres-what-bepicolombo-can-do
- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/missions/a-new-mission-starting-today-8-years-after-launch-bepicolombo-begins-mercury-arrival
- https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/bepicolombo-mission-begins-mercury-arrival-phase-esa-jaxa
Flying over Mercury's north pole gave BepiColombo's monitoring camera 1 (M-CAM
1) a unique opportunity to peer down into the shadowy polar craters on Jan. 8,
2025. (Image credit: ESA/BepiColombo/MTM)
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