First Cruise Science Results (Earth and Venus) and Status of the BepiColombo Mission

Abstract:

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). With its state of the art and very comprehensive payload, BepiColombo will perform measurements to increase our knowledge on the fundamental questions about Mercury’s evolution, composition, interior, magnetosphere, and exosphere. The mission has been launched on 20 October 2018 from the European spaceport in French Guyana and is now on route to Mercury to unveil Mercury’s secrets. Already during its cruise into the inner solar system BepiColombo has several opportunities for scientific observations. BepiColombo will perform nine flybys, one at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury, before putting its two spacecraft in an orbit around Mercury. In April 2020 BepiColombo has passed Earth and its second planetary flyby will be on 15th October 2020 at Venus.

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. Although the spacecraft is in a stacked configuration during the flybys, some of the instruments on both spacecraft are able to perform scientific observations.

A status of the mission and instruments and a summary of first results from measurements taken during the first two flybys at Earth and Venus flyby will be given.