Europe’s joint BepiColombo spacecraft, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has entered its final approach phase toward Mercury following an eight-year interplanetary voyage.
After completing a series of complex gravitational assist flybys around Earth, Venus, and Mercury itself, the dual-probe spacecraft is preparing to execute critical orbit insertion maneuvers to decouple into two distinct orbiters: ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. Once in stable orbit, the mission will conduct high-resolution surface mapping, analyze magnetic field dynamics, and examine the planet's extreme thermal environment, providing unprecedented data on the Solar System's innermost planet.
