BepiColombo: The spacecraft that spent 8 years travelling to Mercury is finally arriving in 2026
PC: ESA Why Mercury remains one of the least explored planets The unusual path to the Solar System's innermost planet How BepiColombo was designed How
PC: ESA Why Mercury remains one of the least explored planets The unusual path to the Solar System's innermost planet How BepiColombo was designed How engineers kept the mission on track How BepiColombo will enter orbit Mercury still keeps many unanswered questions For most space missions, the launch is the headline moment. For BepiColombo, the real milestone arrives years later. After spending nearly eight years weaving through the inner Solar System, the European-Japanese spacecraft is now approaching the point it was designed to reach from the very beginning. As reported by ESA, in November 2026, Mercury is expected to finally capture the spacecraft into orbit, ending one of the longest and most carefully managed planetary journeys ever attempted. The wait has been deliberate rather than unexpected. Travelling to the closest planet to the Sun demands an approach unlike almost any other destination in space, requiring repeated gravity assists and continuous adjustments instead of a direct flight. Once BepiColombo settles into orbit, scientists will begin a new chapter in Mercury exploration, a planet that has remained surprisingly unfamiliar despite sitting in Earth's cosmic neighbourhood.Mercury has never attracted the steady stream of missions seen at Mars or even Venus. Its position close to the Sun makes every visit technically demanding, leaving astronomers with only a handful of close encounters over the past five decades.The first came through NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft during the mid-1970s.
Those flybys provided humanity's earliest detailed views of the scorched world but were never intended to place a spacecraft into orbit. Decades later, NASA's MESSENGER mission changed that by circling Mercury between 2011 and 2015, transforming understanding of its geology, magnetic field and chemical composition.BepiColombo now becomes only the third mission to arrive at Mercury and just the second designed to orbit the planet, making its arrival a significant addition to a surprisingly short history of exploration.Mercury might appear closer than Mars on a map of the Solar System, but distance alone tells very little of the story. Any spacecraft heading inward towards the Sun gathers enormous speed as solar gravity pulls it closer. That extra velocity becomes the main obstacle.Instead of racing directly towards Mercury, BepiColombo has spent years doing almost the opposite. The mission has repeatedly slowed itself down through a carefully planned sequence of planetary encounters. A flyby of Earth, two close passes of Venus and six encounters with Mercury gradually reduced the spacecraft's speed. At the same time, its ion propulsion system supplied a continuous but gentle push, making small corrections over thousands of hours rather than relying on powerful bursts.The result has been a journey defined by patience instead of speed.Although commonly described as a single spacecraft, BepiColombo actually began its mission as a stack of three connected vehicles.The Mercury Transfer Module has carried the mission through interplanetary space while providing the ion propulsion needed during the long cruise.
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