A stunning early morning launch lifted the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft into space on Saturday, 20 October. This marked the start of intensive, round-the-clock flight control activities to ensure the mission’s health and functioning in the harsh environment of space.
At 13:45CEST on Monday 22 October, just 58 hours into its mission, the critical first segment of the fledgeling satellite’s long voyage to Mercury was wrapped up, as teams at ESA’s mission control centre declared the critical ‘launch and early orbit phase’ complete.
The end of the beginning now beckons months of extensive in-orbit commissioning activities, in which operations teams will work extended hours daily until the end of December, performing tests to ensure the health of BepiColombo’s science instruments, its propulsion and other systems.
“Lots of people think you point a spacecraft in a particular direction and off it goes, making its own way to its final destination,” says Elsa Montagnon, Spacecraft Operations Manager for BepiColombo.
In the hours before Saturday’s liftoff, the Main Control Room of ESA’s ESOC operations centre was centre stage for the network countdown — a synchronised sequence involving facilities at ESOC, Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, and at ground stations on four continents supporting the launch.
The final GO/NOGO rollcall saw Flight Director Andrea Accomazzo check in with the flight controllers at ESOC, each confirming they were “go for launch".
Shortly after, at 3:45 CEST on 20 October, BepiColombo hitched a ride into space on top of an Ariane 5 rocket, which provided a flawless orbit injection onto the planned interplanetary transfer trajectory.
Booster separation came just two minutes later, as the Ariane 5’s two solid rocket boosters detached themselves from the core stage; later, BepiColombo began its solo flight upon separation from the Ariane upper stage at around 4:12 CEST.
“Years of planning, and months of training and simulations led up to these fast-paced and vital moments,” recalls Elsa.
At 04:20 CEST, ESA’s deep space tracking station at New Norcia, Western Australia, picked up these first signals, followed by a rush of ‘telemetry’ — real-time status information and data — which was the first chance teams on the ground had to verify how the spacecraft was adapting to its new environment.
These images allowed flight controllers to visually verify the correct deployment of solar arrays and antennas.
Having worked around the clock since the launch of this remarkable mission, teams at ESA’s control centre in Germany are tired, but happy.
“The launch and early orbit phase was a huge success, but now comes seven years of complex operations as BepiColombo travels nine billion km to the innermost planet of the Solar System,” explains Paolo Ferri, Head of Mission Operations at ESA.
In an 'operational arc', the spacecraft's ion thruster runs at low energies for extended periods of hours and days, as opposed to traditional, high-energy chemical thruster burns that run for just minutes or hours. The benefit of an arc is it provides the same acceleration with less fuel mass.
This trio of images was captured by the BepiColombo spacecraft after it blasted off into space at 01:45 GMT on 20 October on its seven year cruise to Mercury, the innermost planet of the Solar System.
In the hours immediately after launch, critical operations took place, including deployments of the solar wings and antennas. The Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) has two 15 m-long solar arrays that will be used to generate power, while the antennas onboard ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) are needed to communicate with Earth, and eventually to transmit science data. The deployments were all confirmed by telemetry sent by the spacecraft to ESA’s mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany.
The transfer module is also equipped with three monitoring cameras – or ‘M-CAMs’ – which provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The M-CAM 1 camera imaged one of the deployed solar wings of the transfer module (left), while M-CAM 2 and M-CAM 3 captured the medium- and high-gain antennas on the MPO (centre, and right, respectively), along with other structural elements of the spacecraft.
Click here for an infographic showing the locations of the cameras onboard the MTM together with the new images.
The monitoring cameras will be used on various occasions during the cruise phase, notably during the flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury. While the MPO is equipped with a high-resolution scientific camera, this can only be operated after separating from the MTM upon arrival at Mercury in late 2025 because, like several of the 11 instrument suites, it is located on the side of the spacecraft fixed to the MTM during cruise.
JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter sits inside a protective sunshield on ‘top’ of the MPO, and cannot be seen in these images.