UK technology helps BepiColumbo on its way to Mercury

Any long-duration space mission is a deeply impressive enterprise. However, a journey to the inner solar system — where the radiation from the sun is at its most intense and the gravitational forces are extreme — tests the ingenuity of space technologists to the limit.

For this reason, the BepiColumbo mission, due to set off on a mind-boggling six-year, seven-billion-kilometre voyage to Mercury in 2014 is one of the most challenging unmanned European space missions ever to be embarked upon.

The €665m (£584m) project, led by the European Space Agency (ESA) and relying on a significant contribution from UK-developed space technology, is intended to achieve a scientific first by delivering two probes to Mercury’s orbit. One of these, the Japanese-developed Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), will monitor the magnetic field around the planet, while the other, the European-developed Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), will construct a detailed map of the planet’s entire surface. The mission is expected to learn significantly more about Mercury than previous missions to the solar system’s innermost planet on NASA’s Mariner and Messenger spacecraft, which conducted flybys and did not enter orbit.