BepiColombo is Europe and Japan's first mission to Mercury, and the second and most complex mission ever to orbit the planet. A joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), BepiColombo will investigate the small desert world of Mercury, which is the innermost and least explored planet in the inner Solar System. The mission is comprised of two science orbiters – the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) – packed with scientific instruments to thoroughly study the planet. On board of MPO are two instruments developed at the University of Bern: the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) and STROFIO (sTart from a ROtating Field mass spectrOmeter), which will map the planets surface and analyze its exosphere, respectively.
BepiColombo begins its Mercury Arrival Phase. The Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) will separate from its two science orbiters MPO and Mio. This is the first critical stage after the eight-year journey BepiColombo has successfully made to Mercury.
The European Space Agency (ESA) will livestream the separation of the MTM on their YouTube account on September 03, starting 13:45 CEST (subject to change at short notice). More information and updates about the livestream can be found on the ESA Website here.
The contributions of the Physics Institute at the University of Bern are both located on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO). The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) forms an integral part of a larger geodesy and geophysics package, incorporating radio science and stereo imaging. It was developed by the Planetary Imaging Group (PIG) under the leaderhsip of Prof. em. Dr. Nicolas Thomas, in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Current instrument PI in Bern is PD Dr. Antoine Pommerol. Development of the mass spectrometer STROFIO, part of the larger SERENA science experiment, was led by Prof. em. Dr. Peter Wurz. Nicolas Thomas and Peter Wurz were both also part of ESA's science advisory group which designed the mission.
BELA is one of the most important and most sensitive experiments on board the MPO. Its aim is to measure the shape, topography and morphology of the surface of Mercury in order to create a digital terrain model that allows quantitative exploration of the geology, the tectonics, and the age of the planet's surface.
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STROFIO is an innovative mass spectrometer and one of four sensors of the SERENA experiment on board the MPO. It was specifically built for Mercury's atmosphere and MPO's orbit, where it will in-situ record the density of low-energy neutral particles within the exosphere and analyze its chemical composition.
