Updated status and science goals of the BepiColombo mission

Go Murakami; Hajime Hayakawa; Masaki Fujimoto; BepiColombo Project Team

Presentation information

[J] Oral

P (Space and Planetary Sciences ) » P-CG Complex & General

[P-CG25] Planetary Magnetosphere, Ionosphere, and Atmosphere

Tue. May 28, 2019 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM A05 (TOKYO BAY MAKUHARI HALL)

convener:Kanako Seki(Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo), Takeshi Imamura(Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo), Hiroyuki Maezawa(Department of Physical Science Osaka Prefecture University), Naoki Terada(Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University), Chairperson:Hiromu Nakagawa(Planetary Atmosphere Physics Laboratory, Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University), Kanako Seki( Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo,)

10:45 AM - 11:00 AM

[PCG25-05] Updated status and science goals of the BepiColombo mission

*Go Murakami¹, Hajime Hayakawa¹, Masaki Fujimoto¹, BepiColombo Project Team (1.Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

The ESA-JAXA joint mission BepiColombo is now on the track to Mercury. Two spacecraft for BepiColombo, "MIO" (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter: MMO) and "Bepi" (Mercury Planetary Orbiter: MPO), were launched by Ariane-5 launch vehicle from Kourou in French Guiana on 20 October 2018. During the cruise to Mercury, in addition to two spacecraft MMO Sunshield and Interface Structure (MOSIF) and Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) are all integrated together. The critical phase just after launch and the near Earth commissioning phase were successfully finished in end of 2018, and the first electrical propulsion started from Decemeber 2018. The next activities are delta commissioning of high voltage instruments in mid 2019, and the first flyby around the Earth in April 2020. Here we report the updated status of BepiColombo mission and the overview of its science goals.