How Europe and Japan Are Going After Mercury

What’s Happening on Mercury with Europe and Japan?

#mercury #space

After nearly three years, the world's finally gotten images back from Europe and Japan's BepiColombo spacecraft. But, of course, this wasn't the first time we've done so — the Mariner 10 spacecraft mapped a little under half of Mercury's surface in 1974, and MESSENGER did so in 2008.

However, neither of those previous two missions have returned images and details as clear as BepiColombo has. While the two, yes two, spacecraft are just beginning their slow descent towards Mercury's surface to start running scientific tests in 2026, there's already more clarity and information the scientific community has collected since its early-October flyby.

For those unfamiliar with BepiColombo, it's a joint international mission between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or the ESA and JAXA. Built to study virtually all of Mercury, our solar system's closest-to-the-Sun baby planet, the mission is divided into two distinct spacecraft.

The first is the ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter, the MPO. The MPO definitely carries the brunt of the mission, packing 1,150 kilograms of 11 scientific instruments compared to the MMO's 275 kilograms and 5 instruments.

This spacecraft's goal is to just find out whatever it can about Mercury's surface and what's going on right underneath. Plus, it's the way we've gotten some high-definition images from that near to the Sun. And the probe itself, but that's more of a routine maintenance thing.

From the MPO's images, we've already seen quite a bit of new activity. There are quite a few craters and cavities on Mercury that we've seen scanned or analyzed beforehand, but not with an image this clear.

In this video, we uncover what's happening with Mercury and what the ESA and JAXA have planned for future missions to the planet.

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