Configuration of BepiColombo's fifth Mercury flyby
Configuration of BepiColombo's fifth Mercury flyby
On 1 December 2024, the joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission completed its fifth flyby of the planet Mercury, bringing it even closer to entering into orbit around the planet in 2026. The spacecraft passed over the surface of the small planet at 15:23 CET at an altitude of 37,630 kilometres. This is much further away than the first four flybys of the planet, when BepiColombo was only 165-240 kilometres from its surface. What made this flyby unique was that, for the first time, the DLR-developed and built MERTIS instrument was pointed at Mercury. This was the first time a space probe measured how Mercury reflects and emits radiation in the mid-infrared (wavelengths from 7 to 14 micrometres). Other instruments switched on during this flyby included the magnetometers MPO-MAG and MMO-MGF, the gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer MGNS, the X-ray and particle spectrometer SIXS, the dust monitor MDM and the PWI instrument, which detects electric fields, plasma and radio waves.
