At 15:24 CEST on 15 June 2026, a faint blue glow in space was switched off for the last time. After powering BepiColombo's eight-year journey across the inner Solar System, the spacecraft's solar electric propulsion (SEP) system completed its final thrust arc, marking the end of BepiColombo’s long cruise phase and the beginning of its arrival at Mercury. 

…After a long, challenging cruise phase with nine planetary flybys (one by Earth, two by Venus and six by Mercury), BepiColombo finally closed this chapter last Monday by permanently switching off its SEP thrusters…

Without any other source of propulsion, BepiColombo will follow a “ballistic” or free-falling trajectory as it initiates its first key arrival manoeuvre – MTM separation – on 3 September 2026.

After the MTM is ejected, the remaining spacecraft composite (MPO-Mio-MOSIF) will continue its planetary approach using MPO’s chemical propulsion system. This system will adjust the spacecraft’s trajectory ahead of the critical Mercury orbit insertion manoeuvre on 21 November, then guide it into Mio’s deployment orbit in early December before finally lowering MPO into its science orbit by March 2027…

  • RuBisCO@slrpnk.net
    2·
    18 days ago

    9 flybys?! And no “warp to encounter”.

    The stacked spacecraft left Earth with a hyperbolic excess velocity of 3.475 km/s (2.159 mi/s). Initially, the craft was placed in a heliocentric orbit similar to that of Earth. After both the spacecraft and Earth completed one and a half orbits, it returned to Earth to perform a gravity-assist maneuver and was deflected towards Venus.

    Following its Earth flyby in April 2020, BepiColombo was briefly mistaken for a near-Earth asteroid, receiving the provisional designation 2020 GL2.

    Two consecutive Venus flybys reduced the perihelion near to the Sun–Mercury distance with almost no need for thrust. A sequence of six Mercury flybys lowered the relative velocity to 1.76 km/s (1.09 mi/s). After the fourth Mercury flyby in 2024, the spacecraft is in an orbit similar to that of Mercury and remains in the general vicinity of the planet.

    Yeah, Earth was a little distracted in April of 2020.

    And then came the thruster issues:

    On 15 May 2024, ESA reported an issue preventing the spacecraft’s thrusters from operating at full power during a scheduled manoeuvre on 26 April 2024.[54] On 2 September 2024, ESA reported that to compensate for the reduced available thrust, a revised trajectory had been developed that would add 11 months to the cruise, delaying the expected arrival date from 5 December 2025 to November 2026.

    What a ride! Very KSP.
    The way Ap is drawn in at Mercury reminds me of airbraking at Kerbin.

    So fucking cool. Hats off to the team.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BepiColombo