BepiColombo: A Mission Update

BepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to will carry out a comprehensive exploration of planet Mercury. The mission was launched on 20 October 2018 from the European spaceport Kourou in French Guiana, and is currently on a eight-year-long cruise to Mercury. BepiColombo consists of two orbiters: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio). Following their release from the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) one year from now, these orbiters will be put in orbit around the innermost planet of our Solar System in late 2026. Once in orbit, BepiColombo with its very comprehensive, interdisciplinary payload will perform measurements to increase our knowledge on the fundamental questions about Mercury’s evolution, composition, interior, magnetosphere, and exosphere. BepiColombo successfully completed the last of its 6 flybys of Mercury in January 2025, and will continue its cruise during the remainder of 2025 and much of 2026. Although the two BepiColombo orbiters are in a stacked configuration during the cruise, during which only some of the instruments can perform scientific observations, the mission has already produced some very valuable results, including striking observations of the planet using its three engineering monitoring cameras. We shall provide a summary of the mission status, a preview of the remaining plans for the mission up to and after arrival in orbit around Mercury, a broad overview of scientific results to date, and observations by the mission's monitoring cameras from the Mercury flybys.