BepiColombo handover
Date: 25 March 2019
Satellite: BepiColombo
Location: ESA's European Space Operations Centre, Darmstadt, Germany
Copyright: ESA – R. Palmari
Patrick Martin, ESA BepiColombo mission manager (left) and Ulrich Reininghaus, ESA BepiColombo project manager (right), after the formal review of the mission's commissioning period, held at ESA's operation centre in Darmstadt, Germany, on 26 March 2019.
Launched on 20 October 2018, the joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission is on its seven-year journey to Mercury, the innermost planet in the Solar System.
After confirmation that the overall capabilities and performance at the end of the near-Earth commissioning phase meet the mission requirements, BepiColombo was formally handed over from the ESA project and industrial teams that built it to the scientists who will operate the science instruments once at Mercury, as well as on occasions during the cruise phase – including the two Venus flybys, for example.
