BepiColombo - Outreach with Mcam images

Launched on 20 October 2018 from the European spaceport Kourou in French Guyana and after finishing most of its about eight year-long cruise-phase, BepiColombo has successfully performed nine flybys (at Earth, twice at Venus and six at Mercury). On arrival in orbit around Mercury in late 2026 it will perform measurements to increase our knowledge on the fundamental questions about Mercury’s evolution, composition, interior, magnetosphere, and exosphere with its state of the art and very comprehensive payload. BepiColombo consists of two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) and is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Since the two spacecraft are in a stacked configuration during the cruise only some of the instruments are able to perform scientific observations. The BepiColombo Camera instrument suite, SIMBIO-SYS, on MPO is blocked and cannot be operated during cruise. However, a set of monitoring cameras (Mcam) located on the BepiColombo Transfer-Module (MTM) could be used to image the flyby targets. These images although of low quality and only black and white could be successfully used for outreach activities.

A summary of these activities and some conclusions for future missions will be given.