{"id":676705,"date":"2026-09-07T11:05:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T11:05:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676705\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T11:05:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T11:05:26","slug":"spacecraft-draw-closer-to-mercury-after-nearly-decade-long-voyage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/676705\/","title":{"rendered":"Spacecraft draw closer to Mercury after nearly decade-long voyage"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Two\u00a0Mercury-bound spacecraft<\/a>\u00a0left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home stretch of their nearly decade-long voyage to the solar system’s smallest and closest-to-the-sun planet.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0linked European and Japanese spacecraft<\/a>\u00a0separated as planned from their cruiser, but controllers had to wait two anxious hours to receive confirmation via radio signals. The crucial operation was broadcast from the European Space Agency’s control center in Germany, more than 124 million miles away.<\/p>\n

(MORE: <\/strong>How the moon amplifies storm surge: tides, supermoons and the 2030s<\/strong><\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s a brilliant moment,” said lead project scientist Geraint Jones.<\/p>\n

If all goes well, the conjoined spacecraft known as BepiColombo will enter orbit\u00a0around Mercury<\/a>\u00a0in November and split from each other in December to map and study the entire planet from different altitudes. As of Thursday, the spacecraft still had 2 million miles to go before reaching its destination.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Launched in 2018, the BepiColombo mission is named for the Italian mathematician who took part in NASA’s Mariner 10 mission to Mercury in the 1970s. Only one other spacecraft, NASA’s Messenger, has explored the puzzling, scorching planet that is just a little bigger than our moon.<\/p>\n

“How tiny Mercury is and still it holds some of the biggest mysteries of our solar system,” mission manager Santa Martinez said earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Added Jones: “There’s a huge amount still left to be learned.”<\/p>\n

2 spacecraft, 6 billion years, 8 years and 9 flybys\"Mercury\"<\/p>\n

BepiColombo already has traveled more than 6 billion miles on its roundabout route, according to Martinez.<\/p>\n

It needed nine planetary flybys to reduce its energy enough to be caught in Mercury’s orbit. The last flyby, in January 2025, yielded stunning photos of Mercury’s impact craters and volcanic plains.<\/p>\n

(MORE: <\/strong>

NASA finds signs of liquid nitrogen on Pluto’s heart-shaped glacier<\/strong><\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s essentially equivalent to operating with a very hot pizza oven running right on your back,” he said.<\/p>\n

Science observations should begin next spring, with the European Space Agency covering most of the mission’s $2 billion cost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Two\u00a0Mercury-bound spacecraft\u00a0left their mother ship behind on Thursday and headed down the home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":676706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[30727,62852,18,11563,25497,19,17,3849,32655,193984,2660,286396,286397,1024,133,451],"class_list":["post-676705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ap","tag-bepicolombo","tag-eire","tag-european","tag-fla","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-its","tag-jones","tag-martinez","tag-mercury","tag-mercury-in","tag-mercury-launched","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117229436172136775","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}