The European Space Agency released a video assembled from images taken by BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module during its eight-year journey. The joint ESA and JAXA mission travelled 9.9 billion kilometres and completed nine planetary flybys. The transfer module separated from the two science orbiters on 3 September, leaving the footage as the final record from the mission's power and propulsion stage.
The European Space Agency assembled a four-minute, 20-second video from images taken by monitoring cameras on BepiColombo's Mercury Transfer Module. The cameras were not scientific imagers; they were installed to inspect spacecraft components and deployed solar arrays. Even so, during flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury they recorded the spacecraft itself against changing planetary views.[1], [2]
The joint BepiColombo mission of ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launched on 20 October 2018 and travelled 9.9 billion kilometres through the inner Solar System. It altered its trajectory with one Earth flyby, two Venus flybys and six Mercury flybys. The nine encounters allowed the spacecraft to approach Mercury while conserving propellant.[1], [2]
The Mercury Transfer Module, which supplied electricity and solar-electric propulsion to the two science orbiters during the cruise, separated from the spacecraft stack on 3 September 2026. ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, Mio, are continuing their final approach. The released footage is not a new scientific measurement; it is a visual record of the mission architecture's eight-year cruise phase.[1], [2]
