BepiColombo

[Airicist]

Contributors:

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

European Space Agency

Airbus Defence and Space

Home pages:

esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/BepiColombo

stp.isas.jaxa.jp/mercury

BepiColombo on Wikipedia

[Airicist]

Testing ESA's Mercury mission

Published on Jan 5, 2015

Europe’s Mercury mission is moved through ESA’s ESTEC Test Centre in this new video, positioning it for testing inside the largest vacuum chamber in Europe, for a trial by vacuum.

BepiColombo, Europe’s first mission to study Mercury, is a joint mission with Japan. Two spacecraft – the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter – will fly in two different paths around the planet to study it from complementary perspectives.

Flight hardware for the mission is undergoing testing at ESA’s Technical Centre, ESTEC, in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, the largest spacecraft test facility in Europe, to prepare for its 2016 launch.

The Mercury Planetary Orbiter was placed inside the chamber in late October for ‘thermal–vacuum’ testing. It will sit in vacuum until early December, subjected to the equivalent temperature extremes that will be experienced in Mercury orbit.

Liquid nitrogen runs through the walls of the chamber to recreate the chill of empty space, while an array of lamps focuses simulated sunlight 10 times more intense than on Earth.

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BepiColombo’s journey to Mercury

Published on Jul 5, 2017

Animation visualising BepiColombo’s 7.2 year journey to Mercury.

This animation is based on a launch date of 5 October, marking the start of the launch window in October 2018. It illustrates the gravity assist flybys that the spacecraft will make at Earth, Venus and Mercury before arriving at Mercury in December 2025.

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BepiColombo - Mission to Mercury

Published on Jul 4, 2017

BepiColombo: To this day, Mercury remains the most mysterious planet of our solar system. The Sun’s glare makes it impossible to study via telescope and the extreme heat and proximity to the Sun make it hard to reach. As many questions remain unanswered, ESA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have teamed up for the dual spacecraft mission “BepiColombo”, named after the Italian professor Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Colombo, which is made of 2 separate orbiters: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (supplied by ESA) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (supplied by JAXA), and a propulsion module.

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BepiColombo prepares for Mercury

Published on Sep 1, 2017

ESA’s first mission to Mercury, BepiColombo, is now set for final thermal tests before launching to the hottest planet in our Solar System in October 2018. Europe said farewell to the spacecraft in July when it was at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, in its launch configuration.

BepiColombo is a joint mission to Mercury between the ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and consists of two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.

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BepiColombo simulation

Published on Jul 10, 2018

Preparation is well under way for BepiColombo. Recently the long flight to Mercury was simulated at ESOC, ESA's Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where it will be controlled during its journey after its launch from Kourou.

[Airicist]

BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Published on Oct 9, 2018

BepiColombo is scheduled for launch at 01:45 GMT (03:45 CEST) on 20 October on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou.

Final assembly of the two orbiters and transfer module has taken place, ready for the spacecraft to be integrated into its Ariane 5 launcher.

BepiColombo is Europe’s first mission to Mercury, the smallest and least explored planet in the inner Solar System. It is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, and consists of two scientific orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The mission will study all aspects of Mercury, from the structure and dynamics of its magnetosphere and how it interacts with the solar wind, to its internal structure with its large iron core, and the origin of the planet’s magnetic field.