BepiColombo spacecraft completes tricky arrival at Mercury after 8-year journey

The BepiColombo spacecraft, carrying European and Japanese probes, arrived at Mercury on Sept 3 after an eight-year journey, facing what the European Space Agency called its most challenging planetary arrival sequence ever attempted. The mission aims to study the Sun-scorched, least understood planet in our solar system. The spacecraft traveled over 10 billion km with nine flybys to reach Mercury, whose weak gravity and proximity to the Sun make approach complex. The two attached probes will separate from the transfer module autonomously on Sept 3, with a 30-minute communication delay complicating ground control operations. Mercury, the least studied of the four rocky inner planets, has only been visited by NASA's Mariner 10 in 1974 and MESSENGER in 2011. BepiColombo, with 16 instruments and a 1.7 billion-euro budget, will begin detailed studies from April, with the probes separating into their final orbits in December.