BepiColombo's sixth Mercury flyby

On 8 January 2024, the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission will fly past planet Mercury for the sixth time, readying itself for entering orbit around the Solar System’s mysterious innermost planet in 2026. At 06:59 CET, it will fly just 295 km above the planet's surface.  

After flying over Mercury's cold, dark night side, the spacecraft will pass over the north pole. Monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) 1 and 2 will peer down into craters cast in permanent shadow before getting nice views of the vast northern volcanic plains and Mercury's largest impact crater, called the Caloris Basin. 

The other science instruments switched on during this flyby are the magnetometers MPO-MAG and MMO-MGF, the ISA accelerometer, the MGNS gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, the MIXS imaging X-ray spectrometer, the MORE radiometer, the SERENA and MPPE particle analysers, the SIXS X-ray and particle spectrometer, the MDM dust monitor and the PWI instrument which detects electric fields, plasma waves and radio waves.  

BepiColombo, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will be the second and most complex mission ever to orbit Mercury. It comprises two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. While on their way to Mercury, the two orbiters are both attached to the Mercury Transfer Module.  

[Image description: Infographic explaining BepiColombo’s sixth flyby of Mercury. In the centre of the graphic we see the spacecraft flying past the planet. On the left we see the inner Solar System in perspective, with the positions of Mercury, Venus and Earth indicated. On the right we see which of BepiColombo’s instruments will be activated during the flyby.]