They have announced problems in the BepiColombo mission destined for Planet Mercury, the smallest and closest planet to the Sun, this is a joint mission between the European space agency and Jaxa, which is the Japanese space agency, it was launched in October 2018 and is composed of two orbiters to explore the surface and interior of Mercury, as well as the magnetic field of this planet.
The two waves are the Mercury Planet orbiter of the European space agency and the Mercury magnetosphere orbiter of the jaxa, the official arrival at their destination is scheduled for October 5, 2025, I say official because in reality they have already passed through Mercury, the The travel plan to achieve the appropriate speed is quite complex, the ship has to make one flyby of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury itself. So in reality they have already passed by Mercury, although not in the way they need to place the two. waves in Mercury orbit and thus be able to begin carrying out their scientific work.
The current issue that is happening and where the mission is in danger is that this spacecraft has experienced a problem that prevents the spacecraft's thrusters from operating at maximum power, the solar panels and the electric propulsion system of the transfer module are used to generate thrust during the spacecraft's complex journey from Earth to Mercury, but on April 26, when BepiColombo was scheduled to begin its next maneuver, the transfer module failed to supply enough electrical power to the spacecraft's thrusters.
At that point a combined team from the European space agency and the mission's industrial partners set to work to identify the problem and by May 7 had managed to restore BepiColombo's thrust to approximately 90 percent of its previous level, without However, the available power of the transfer module is still lower than it should be, so full thrust cannot yet be restored.
The team's current priorities are to keep the spacecraft's propulsion stable at the current power level and estimate how this will affect the next maneuvers. If the current power level is maintained, the BepiColombo could reach Mercury in time for its fourth gravity assist. which would be in September of this year, so the mission continues as long as a new problem arises.
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