CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — After almost ten years of travel, the European‑Japanese BepiColombo mission is on the home stretch toward Mercury. On Thursday the two spacecraft detached from their carrier as planned, and mission controllers confirmed the separation after a two‑hour radio wait.
Lead project scientist Geraint Jones called the moment “brilliant,” noting that the pair still has about 2 million miles (3.3 million kilometers) to travel before reaching the planet.
Mission timeline and goals
Launched in 2018, BepiColombo has already covered more than 6 billion miles (10 billion kilometers) on a complex trajectory that included nine planetary flybys to shed speed. The final flyby in January 2025 produced striking images of Mercury’s impact craters and volcanic plains.
If all proceeds as scheduled, the combined spacecraft will enter Mercury’s orbit in November 2026. In December the two modules will separate, allowing them to map the planet from different altitudes.
Science to be conducted
Starting next spring, a suite of instruments on the European and Japanese craft will study Mercury’s magnetic field, dense interior, and surface geology, including the mysterious “hollows”—depressions thought to be formed by volatile minerals vaporizing from rocks.
Scientists will also investigate the planet’s extreme temperature contrast: surface temperatures can exceed 800 °F (427 °C), while permanently shadowed polar craters harbor ice.
Engineering challenges
Because Mercury lies so close to the Sun, engineers had to design the spacecraft to survive “extremely punishing” conditions, likened by ESA operations chief Ignacio Tanco to “a very hot pizza oven running right on your back.”
The mission, a joint effort between the European Space Agency and Japan’s space agency, is funded primarily by ESA at a cost of roughly $2 billion (1.7 billion euros).
With the separation successful, the scientific community looks forward to a new era of Mercury exploration, building on the legacy of NASA’s Messenger probe, the only other spacecraft to have visited the planet.
Original reporting: Alexandria, VA News – WTOP News — read the source article.
