BepiColombo completes final major step before Mercury orbit

Europe's BepiColombo mission, after an eight-year voyage, successfully jettisoned its propulsion module on Thursday, clearing a major milestone as it prepares to enter orbit around Mercury in November. The nearly $2 billion ESA-led mission, with Japanese and US contributions, used an unprecedented nine planetary flybys and ion thrusters to reach the innermost planet. The separation, occurring 39 million miles from the Sun, was a high-risk operation that exposed science instruments for the first time. BepiColombo, comprising European and Japanese orbiters that will separate in December, aims to map Mercury in high resolution and study its magnetic field and surface composition. It follows NASA's MESSENGER probe, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015.