BepiColombo’s arrival at Mercury begins (official ESA broadcast) – Watch YouTube on The BepiColombo mission is finally preparing to reach its exotic destination. BepiColombo launched in October 2018 and took a long, circular and very circuitous route to Mercury, the innermost planet in our solar system. That journey is almost over and the mission is preparing for your arrival. BepiColombo’s two scientific orbiters, one led by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the other by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will separate from their power and propulsion module on Thursday (September 3) around 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). You can watch that milestone live here on Space.com, courtesy of ESA, starting at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 GMT). Artist’s impression showing the Mercury Transfer Module (bottom) separated from the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) composite spacecraft. (Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab) ESA will pause the webcast at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) and then resume it an hour later to cover the mission equipment’s signal acquisition of the new free-flying orbiters. Those communications links are expected to be established no earlier than 9:53 a.m. EDT (1353 GMT), according to ESA officials. The webcast will record that activity, as well as some spacecraft status checks, before ending between 10:15 and 10:45 a.m. EDT (1415 to 1445 GMT). You may like Diagram showing the key moments of the arrival of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. (Image credit: ESA) The separation is just the beginning of BepiColombo’s Mercury arrival phase. For example, the two scientific orbiters, ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO or Mio), will not be captured by the planet’s gravity until November 21. The duo will remain connected on that date. If all goes as planned, MPO will launch Mio into its final orbit, a highly elliptical one that will approach to within 590 kilometers (367 miles) of Mercury and depart to within 11,640 km (7,233 miles), on December 9 or 10, and then begin moving toward its own designated path a week later. MPO is scheduled to reach its final orbit, an ellipse with extreme altitudes of 298 miles and 932 miles (480 by 1,500 km), on March 10, 2027. The science phase of the BepiColombo mission (named after Italian mathematician and engineer Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo) will begin on April 6. That scientific work, done for at least one Earth year, should be intriguing and rewarding. MPO will map Mercury and Mio will study its magnetosphere, working together to shed light on “the least explored planet in the inner solar system,” ESA officials wrote in a description of the BepiColombo mission. “Among several investigations, BepiColombo will make a complete map of Mercury at different wavelengths,” they added. “It will map the mineralogy and elemental composition of the planet, determine whether the planet’s interior is molten or not, and investigate the extent and origin of Mercury’s magnetic field.”
