Mission to solve Mercury’s mysteries nears arrival after 8 years
The BepiColombo mission has reached a major milestone by separating its transfer module from the science orbiters as it nears Mercury. This joint ESA and JAXA mission aims to study the planet's formation and evolution after an eight-year journey.
Why it matters
This mission represents a significant achievement in deep-space navigation and provides a rare opportunity to study the least explored planet in the inner solar system.
An ambitious mission to reveal the secrets of the least explored planet in the inner solar system is taking the initial big step in arrival at its cosmic destination after a lengthy journey. The BepiColombo mission, a joint effort between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, intends to use two complementary orbiters to reveal insights into how Mercury formed and evolved so close to the sun. The mission launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport near Kourou, French Guiana, in October 2018. Since then, it has traveled more than 6 billion miles (10 billion kilometers). BepiColombo is named for Italian engineer and mathematician Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, who studied Mercury’s peculiar rotation and proposed trajectories that enabled NASA’s first flybys of the planet in 1974.
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