The BepiColombo crew, led by Elsa Montagnon, seen in the primary management room at ESA’s ESOC mission management centre throughout simulation coaching for ESA’s first mission to Mercury.
BepiColombo will set off in 2018 on a journey to the smallest and least-explored terrestrial planet in our Photo voltaic System, and is because of arrive in late 2025.
Reaching orbit round Mercury is a problem due to its proximity to the Solar, whose large gravitational affect attracts spacecraft to it like water down a plughole.
The mission crew will oversee a collection of 9 flybys round Earth, Venus then Mercury itself to gradual BepiColombo down so it may be captured by the innermost planet. ESA interplanetary missions usually carry out flybys so as to add velocity; BepiColombo marks the primary time that flybys are used to a gradual a spacecraft.
