ESA · Space

BepiColombo Mission's Eight-Year Journey Captured in New Video

A new video compiles footage from the BepiColombo mission's monitoring cameras, showcasing its eight-year journey through the inner Solar System towards Mercury.

The ESA/JAXA mission has traveled 9.9 billion km and completed nine planetary flybys, including one past Earth, two past Venus, and six past Mercury, to adjust its trajectory. The spacecraft, launched on October 20, 2018, is a composite of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio), and the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM).

The video utilizes images from MTM's three monitoring cameras (M-CAMs), which were designed to observe the spacecraft itself. The footage shows solar arrays and antennas of the MTM and MPO. Streaks in the original images, caused by light exposure during readout due to the cameras lacking shutters, have been largely removed for the compilation.

BepiColombo is scheduled to reach Mercury on September 3, 2026, with MTM separating from the orbiters. The MPO and Mio will enter orbit around Mercury in November and separate in December 2026, making BepiColombo the first mission with two spacecraft simultaneously orbiting the planet.

The MTM, lacking its own computer and communication antenna, will continue to orbit the Sun indefinitely after separating from the science modules. It is expected to pass Mercury at a distance of approximately 130,000 km in late October before heading into interplanetary space.

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