First Published October 2021
BepiColombo – Mercury Flyby
On 2nd October 2021, BepiColombo, on its long journey to orbit Mercury, made its first flyby of Mercury.
BepiColombo is an international mission made up of two spacecraft. There is the ESA (European Space Agency) - “Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), and a second orbiter supplied by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) called “Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). The MPO will study the planets surface and interior. The MMO will study the planets magnetic field.
BepiColombo was launched in October 2018. It is not due to arrive in orbit until 2025 when both orbiters will deploy and are expected to operate for about a year. So why is BepiColombo not in orbit now? Due to the gravitational forces, mainly of the sun, it takes a number of flybys, and course corrections, before the craft can be slowed enough to take up orbit. October 2nd 2021 was the first flyby. The next flyby is due to take place June 23rd 2022.
On it’s first flyby, BepiColombo was able to take images of Mercury with it’s engineering camera. The camera is lower resolution than the main mission cameras but the shots were good enough to pick out detail on the surface of Mercury and take a good looking selfie. BepiColombo is still a long way before it will begin its proper science mission, but as it flew near, the team were able to activate some of the instruments in their ‘packed state’ and still get some readings.
