2013–2020: New Spacefaring Nations and Sample Return
BepiColombo
Joint mission en route to investigate Mercury and its environment.
Era 5 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- 20 Oct 2018
- Lead / partner
- ESA / JAXA
- Target
- Mercury
- Category
- Planetary orbiter
- Status
- In transit
- Vehicle
- Ariane 5 ECA
- Mass
- unknown
- Orbit / trajectory
- unknown
Why it happened
BepiColombo flew during 2013–2020: New Spacefaring Nations and Sample Return, as part of ESA / JAXA's work toward mercury. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
The full narrative of this mission is pending research and writing. What is recorded so far: Joint mission en route to investigate Mercury and its environment.
Results
Joint mission en route to investigate Mercury and its environment.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- European Space Agency, via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 igo · license: cc-by-sa-3.0-igo (source, checked 2026-08-24)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog
