Bepi Colombo, a joint European and Japanese explorer, Seven year journey begins after successful launch.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) waterborne probe, BepiColombo, has been on the brink of seven years to Mercury.
The European Space Agency said on Sunday that the probe was successfully launched on the Ariane 5 rocket at the French Guiana space station on Wednesday (February 20), and is now cruising steadily toward Mercury. Beppu Colombo sent his aerial photograph of the unfolded antenna to the space station. It is the first image the probe sent.

Beppu Colombo, a joint venture between Europe and Japan, is scheduled to perform the task of unraveling the mysteries of Mercury and the solar system by sitting on the orbit of Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system, closest to the sun. Humans have reached the surface of Mercury until now, except NASA’s Mariner 10 and MESSENGER 2, which are less observable than other planets. Beppu Colombo is going to investigate precisely the inner structure of Mercury as it goes around its orbit. The team hopes to reveal clues to the secrets of solar system formation.
Beppu Colombo is scheduled to be separated by two satellites after its arrival in Aceh. One is the Mercury Planetary Surveillance Satellite (MPO) developed by the European Space Agency and the other is the Mercury Surveillance Satellite (MMO) developed by the Institute of Aerospace Sciences (ISAS) under the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) )to be.
The two move together as they go from Earth to Mercury. The probe uses a high-efficiency and low-propulsion electronic propulsion system to slowly approach the orbit as the orbit of the sun rises. In April 2020, the planet will close again, and plan to use the gravity of Venus from 2020 to 2021 to change its orbit and to gradually approach the gravity field of Mercury from 2021 to 2025.

As Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, how to withstand heat during the mission was an important challenge for the developer. The intensity of solar energy received by water is ten times that of Earth. Beppu Colombo must withstand temperatures of up to 450 ° C during the day. On the other hand, the severe day-to-day variation falling to -180 ° C is also a challenge. European and Japanese space stations wrapped the entire outside of the ship with a temperature-resistant insulator.

Europe and Japan are collaborating closely with each other as they develop and launch Mercury probe ships as well as the asteroid probe ‘Hayabusa 2’, which has successfully landed the exploration robot ‘Mascot’ (MASCOT).