BepiColombo on its cruise to Mercury – first results and mission status

BepiColombo has finished more than 50% of its about seven year-long cruise-phase. Launched on 20 October 2018 from the European spaceport Kourou in French Guyana it has successfully performed several flybys ( at Earth, twice at Venus and Mercury). BepiColombo with its state of the art and very comprehensive payload will perform measurements to increase our knowledge on the fundamental questions about Mercury’s evolution, composition, interior, magnetosphere, and exosphere. 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 will perform scientific observations. Mio and MPO are connected to each on-top of the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM). The MTM contains a solar electric propulsion engine and will bring the two spacecraft to Mercury. In late 2025, this ‘stack’ configuration is abandoned, the MTM will be jettisoned, and the individual elements spacecraft are brought into their final Mercury orbit: 480x1500km for MPO, and 590x11640km for Mio.  

Despite the reduced instrument availability, scientific and engineering operations has been scheduled during the cruise phase, especially during the swing-bys. A status of the mission and instruments, science operations plan during cruise, and first results of measurements taken in the first four years since launch will be given.