ESA celebrates third birthday of BepiColombo, Europe's first mission to Mercury

The European Space Agency (ESA) is celebrating the third birthday of Europe's first mission to Mercury, BepiColombo that was launched on October 20 in 2018. Currently, on a seven-year journey, the mission consisting of two spacecraft has already conducted four flybys of its nine scheduled ones with the most recent being Mercury. While cruising through the first planet of our solar system, BepiColombo has beamed back stunning images of Mercury along with a recording of the solar winds it endured during the flyby. 

Tough road ahead for BepiColombo

The spacecraft is scheduled to land on Mercury four years from now i.e. in late 2025 and has a pretty tough road waiting for it. According to ESA's descriptions of the BepiColombo's fate, the two spacecraft will endure temperatures in excess of 350 °C and gather data during its one-year nominal mission, with a possible one-year extension. These environmental conditions should not come as a shock as Mercury is the closest planet to the sun which explains its hostility. Besides, the planet is also exposed to rigorous solar winds that decide its atmospheric condition. 

The $750 million mission is a joint operation by the ESA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), as the two aim to study Mercury thoroughly and its origin and evolution so close to the sun. In its three years of existence, the spacecraft has achieved several feats as it completed four of the nine scheduled flybys, out of which six will be of Mercury, and has presented the first images and audio. 

The first recording from Mercury

The ESA engineers were able to extract audio from the data collected by their Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) which is one of the two spacecrafts other than the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) by JAXA. As per the ESA, the sonification of data gathered by the Mercury Planetary Orbiter captured the changing intensity of the magnetic field and solar wind endured by Mercury. It further explained that the sounds were from the moment the spacecraft crossed Mercury's highly turbulent boundary region between the solar wind and the magnetosphere around the planet. Listen to the recording here.

The first image from Mercury

The stunning images obtained by the ESA are from the flybys conducted by BepiColombo in early October. Detailing about the images taken from the Mercury Transfer Module Monitoring Camera 2, the visuals represent part of Mercury's northern hemisphere including Sihtu Planitia that has been flooded by lavas.

Take a look at the images below:

(Image: Twitter/@ESAOperations/@ESA_History)