SPACE: ‘A new mission starting today’: 8 years after launch, BepiColombo begins Mercury arrival.

Today’s maneuver doesn’t place BepiColombo in orbit around Mercury quite yet. MPO and Mio will spend the next several weeks navigating toward the planet ahead of orbital insertion on Nov. 21. “Arriving to Mercury is not as simple as other missions that do a big maneuver and they are there,” said Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo’s operations manager. “In our case, it’s going to be six months of continuous activities.”

The Nov. 21 arrival will begin a sequence of 16 maneuvers to progressively lower and reshape BepiColombo’s orbit. Mio is scheduled to separate from MPO around Dec. 9 and settle into a highly elliptical polar orbit. MPO will jettison Mio’s MOSIF sunshield (Magnetospheric Orbiter Sunshield and Interface Structure) on Dec. 16, then continue lowering its own altitude before reaching its own polar orbit on March 10, 2027.

BepiColombo is scheduled to begin science operations on April 6, 2027, with MPO and Mio studying Mercury simultaneously from complementary orbits. MPO will focus on Mercury’s surface composition, geology and planetary interior, while Mio will investigate the planet’s magnetic field and its interaction with the solar wind.

Here’s to hoping everything goes as planned — and the images ought to be outstanding.