Science & Exploration
BepiColombo: operating in extreme environments
Most of the ESA's previous interplanetary missions have been to relatively cold parts of the Solar System. BepiColombo is the Agency's first to Mercury, where the solar intensity is about 10 times that at Earth. The spacecraft will experience temperatures in excess of 450C – hotter than a pizza oven. To cope with this, external coatings and mechanisms had to be developed and individually tested to prove their capability.
