BepiColombo arriving at Mercury

Celestia-STS delivered 26 EGSE systems 8 years ago for BepiColombo which is now in it’s arrival phase for Mercury

After the announcement last year that the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission had a ‘swing past Mercury‘, BepiColombo is now arriving at Mercury.

The ‘arrival phase’ began with the separation of the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) from the spacecraft stack on 3 September 2026. The composite spacecraft will enter orbit around Mercury on 21 November 2026 and ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Japanese Mio science orbiter’s will separate from each other on 9–10 December 2026.

The mission’s science phase is set to begin in April 2027.

More information about the mission on ESA’s website and in our 2018 news item about the launch of BepiColombo.

Celestia-STS (formally SSBV) delivered 26 EGSE systems for BepiColombo including:

  • 2 x Power Front-Ends: Used to support S/C AIT
  • 16 x MPO SIS (Spacecraft) Interface Simulators: Delivered to Instrument Teams to support their development activities
  • 2 x TTC-IMBUs (Modems) : Integrated into the RF SCOEs
  • 3 x Simulation Front-Ends: Used for AOCS Simulation & Test (1.7m tall racks of equipment)
  • 3 x TM/TC Front-Ends: Used throughout the Spacecraft AIT and used right up until launch.

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