BepiColombo spacecraft arrives at Mercury after eight-year journey

The BepiColombo spacecraft, carrying European and Japanese probes, arrives at Mercury on Thursday after an eight-year journey, facing high-risk maneuvers to study the Sun-scorched planet. The mission aims to release two probes into orbit around the smallest planet in our Solar System. The European Space Agency describes the arrival as its most operationally challenging planetary sequence ever attempted, due to Mercury's extreme proximity to the Sun and weak gravitational pull. The spacecraft traveled over 10 billion kilometers with nine flybys, and the probes will separate from the transfer module at 1200 GMT, executing the maneuver autonomously due to a 30-minute communication delay. Mercury is the least studied of the four rocky inner planets, with mysteries remaining about its magnetic field and iron core. The mission, with sixteen instruments and a 1.7 billion-euro budget, previously faced a thruster glitch in 2024, and the next tricky phase comes in December when the probes separate into their respective orbits.