BepiColombo – Status and first Results from Activities during Cruise and the Earth flyby

Abstract

<p>Mercury is a mysterious planet in many ways very different from what scientist were expecting. BepiColombo was launched on 20 October 2018 the BepiColombo from the European spaceport in French Guyana and is now on route to Mercury to unveil Mercury’s secrets. 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 is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and consists of two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio). </p><p>The BepiColombo spacecraft is during its 7-year long journey to the innermost terrestrial planet in a so-called ‘stacked’ configuration: The Mio and the MPO are connected to each other, and stacked on-top of the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM). Only in late 2025, the ‘stack’ configuration is abandoned and the individual elements spacecraft are brought in to their final Mercury orbit: 480x1500km for MPO, and 590x11640km for Mio. The foreseen orbits of the MPO and Mio will allow close encounters of the two spacecraft throughout the mission. The mission has been named in honor of Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo (1920–1984), who was a brilliant Italian mathematician, who made many significant contributions to planetary research and celestial mechanics.</p><p>On its way BepiColombo has several opportunities for scientific observations - during the cruise into the inner solar system and during nine flybys (one at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury). However, since the spacecraft is in a stacked configuration during the flybys only some of the   instruments on both spacecraft will perform scientific observations. In early April of 2020 BepiColombo will flyby Earth and later in October the first Venus flyby will follow.</p><p>A status of the mission and instruments and first results of measurements taken during the Earth flyby and the first year in cruise will be given.</p>