BepiColombo begins Mercury arrival with MTM separation success

BepiColombo is a joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury. Over the past eight years, it has travelled 9.9 billion kilometres through the inner Solar System and completed nine planetary flybys. The Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) has been essential to this journey, providing power and solar electric propulsion. On 3 September 2026 at 15:49 CEST, ESA's Mission Control at ESOC received the signal confirming that MTM had separated from the spacecraft stack. This landmark achievement begins the arrival phase, with MTM's job now complete.

After months of rigorous simulations, the Mission Control Team gave the official 'GO' for separation at 12:00 CEST. The separation itself was commanded at 14:00 CEST, and due to the spacecraft being about 200 million kilometres away, confirmation took nearly two hours. Following separation, the remaining stack entered safe mode, readjusted its attitude, and reconfigured itself before transmitting status to Earth. At 14:20 CEST, a preliminary Doppler signal indicated separation, and full telemetry confirming success arrived at 15:49 CEST via ESA's Estrack Cebreros and Malargüe deep-space antennas. Emmanuela Bordoni, ESA BepiColombo B-shift Spacecraft Operations Manager, described the moment of confirmation as very powerful after all the waiting and preparation.

This separation is the first in a sequence of key manoeuvres that will see BepiColombo become the first mission to place two spacecraft in orbit around Mercury in December 2026. ESA describes this arrival phase as one of the most complex planetary arrival sequences it has ever attempted. The milestone was celebrated by ESA, industry partners, and the scientific community, with thousands following the live stream.