Jacques van Oene

July 7th, 2017

BepiColumbo is being prepared for a planned October 2018 launch date. Photo Credit: Jacques van Oene / SpaceFlight Insider

NOORDWIJK, Netherlands On Thursday, July 6, theEuropean Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) put the two new BepiColumbo spacecraft on display. ESTEC, the largest European Space Agency (ESA)site in Europe as well as thetest center for all major ESA satellites, played host to an event denoting that the twin spacecraft arejust 15 months away from launch.

The event started at11:00 a.m. local time and lasted for about two hours with various officials touring the clean room that contained the two spacecraft.The event was held to also give the media a chance to have a last look at BepiColombo before it is shipped to the Kourou Space Centre in early 2018, with the launch campaign is scheduled to start in April of 2018.

BepiColumbo is being launched to study the planet Mercurys magnetosphere, its magnetic field, interior structure, as well as the rocky worlds tortured surface. As noted, the mission will be comprised of two spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), and is planned to arrive above the planet in December of 2025.

At present, BepiColumbo is slated to launch atop an Ariane 5 ECA from Kourou, French Guiana, in late 2018. Photo Credit: Jacques van Oene

While the mission might be straightforward enough, its path to Mercury is anything but. It will conductone flyby of Earth, two past Venus, and six of Mercury itself.

In attendance during Thursdays event were the following: Alvaro Gimenez, Director of Science, ESA; Hitoshi Kuninaka, Vice Director General, ISAS; Mathilde Royer, Head of Earth Observation, Navigation and Science, Airbus DS; Ulrich Reininghaus, ESA BepiColombo Project Manager; Markus Schelkle, BepiColombo Project Manager, Airbus DS; Mauro Patroncini, BepiColombo Project Manager, Thales Alenia Space; Hajime Hayakawa, JAXA BepiColombo Project Manager; andJohannes Benkhoff, ESA BepiColombo Project Scientist.

Approved in 2009, BepiColumbo is a part of ESAs Horizon 2000+ programme and will be the last mission of that initiative to be sent aloft. The mission is a partnership between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Arianespaces Ariane 5 ECA launch vehicle has been tapped to hurl the duo out of Earths gravity well and on their way to their destination from Kourou,French Guiana.

Photo Credit: Jacques van Oene

Tagged: BepiColumbo ESA ESTEC European Space Agency Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA Lead Stories

A native of the Netherlands, van Oene became infected with the space virus by an enthusiastic school teacher in 1981. Since 1994 he has been a freelance space photographer and writer for magazines and websites in Holland, Belgium and Spaceflight, the magazine of the British Interplanetary Society. van Oene is also the co-founder and CFO of SPACEPATCHES.NL. This Netherlands-based foundation currently produces all the official Soyuz crew patches for the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos.

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BepiColumbo readied to start journey to Mercury next year - SpaceFlight Insider