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takyon writes:

Update: Launch was successful.

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury is set for launch on Saturday, October 20. The spacecraft consists of two satellites which will eventually detach and settle into two separate orbits around Mercury:

BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to the planet Mercury. The mission comprises two satellites to be launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO). The mission will perform a comprehensive study of Mercury, including its magnetic field, magnetosphere, interior structure and surface. It is scheduled to launch in October 2018, with an arrival at Mercury planned for December 2025, after a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and six flybys of Mercury. The mission was approved in November 2009, after years in proposal and planning as part of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000+ program; it will be the last mission of the program to be launched.

[...] The main objectives of the mission are:

• Study the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star
• Study Mercury as a planet—its form, interior, structure, geology, composition and craters
• Investigate Mercury's exosphere, composition and dynamics, including generation and escape
• Study Mercury's magnetised envelope (magnetosphere) - structure and dynamics
• Investigate the origin of Mercury's magnetic field
• Verify Einstein's theory of general relativity by measuring the parameters gamma and beta of the parameterized post-Newtonian formalism with high accuracy.

The first event will be an Earth flyby on April 6, 2020, followed by a Venus flyby on October 12, 2020. The spacecraft's first Mercury flyby will be on October 2, 2021.

ESA and JAXA pages.

Previously: ESA Shows off BepiColombo Mercury Orbiters Ahead of 2018 Launch

Original Submission

1. "takyon" - https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/
2. "Launch was successful" - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/science/bepicolombo-mercury-launch.html
3. "BepiColombo" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BepiColombo
4. "Mercury" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)
5. "Horizon 2000+" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Space_Agency_programs_and_missions#Horizon_2000+
6. "ESA" - https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/BepiColombo_operations
7. "JAXA" - http://global.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/bepi/
8. "ESA Shows off BepiColombo Mercury Orbiters Ahead of 2018 Launch" - https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/07/08/1419245
9. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=29613

printed from SoylentNews, BepiColombo Mission to Mercury Set for Launch on October 20 (Update: Launch Successful) on 2026-01-21 09:10:00