ESA Science & Technology - BepiColombo

The magnetic and particle environment around Mercury was sampled by BepiColombo for the first time during the mission's close flyby of the planet at 199 km on 1-2 October 2021, while the huge gravitational pull of the planet was felt by its accelerometers.

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has captured its first views of its destination planet Mercury as it swooped past in a close gravity assist flyby last night.

The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission has completed the first of two Venus flybys needed to set it on course with the Solar System's innermost planet, Mercury.

Science instruments aboard the European-Japanese Mercury explorer BepiColombo are in excellent condition to gather high-quality data during the spacecraft's long cruise to Mercury despite not having been designed for this purpose, teams collaborating on the mission learned during the spacecraft's April flyby of Earth.

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission completed its first flyby on 10 April, as the spacecraft came less than 12 700 km from Earth's surface at 06:25 CEST, steering its trajectory towards the final destination, Mercury.

A beautiful sequence of 53 images taken by the monitoring cameras on board the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission as the spacecraft made its first close flyby of its destination planet Mercury on 1 October 2021.

A sequence of images taken by one of the monitoring cameras on board the European-Japanese BepiColombo mission to Mercury, as the spacecraft slewed to point towards Venus ahead of its 15 October flyby.

These are the winning entries in the photo competition for amateur astronomers who captured the unique event of the European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft's flyby of Earth.

A compilation of about 200 images collected by the joint European-Japanese mission BepiColombo during its first – and only – flyby of Earth on 10 April 2020, a manoeuvre needed to adjust its trajectory en route to its destination, Mercury.

A sequence of images taken by one of the MCAM selfie cameras on board of the European-Japanese Mercury mission BepiColombo as the spacecraft zoomed past the planet during its first and only Earth flyby.