After 8 years, Europe's BepiColombo mission is on final approach to Mercury

The hottest news in space

“Fundamentally, we want to learn about the origins of this planet and how it came to be like it is.”

Artist's illustration of BepiColombo's propulsion module (bottom) separating from the spacecraft's two science orbiters. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab and NASA/JPL

The BepiColombo mission cleared a major milestone this week in the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to Mercury, the hard-to-reach, scorching hot iron world at the Solar System’s innermost frontier.

The robotic science mission, with a price tag of nearly $2 billion, is led by the European Space Agency with contributions from Japan and the United States. Since its launch in 2018, BepiColombo has spiraled closer to the Sun using a combination of plasma propulsion and a series of flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury. The maneuvers changed the spacecraft’s velocity and steered it toward a final encounter with Mercury later this year.

Next...

Copyright of this story solely belongs to arstechnica.com. To see the full text click HERE