Mission Info

BepiColombo is an international mission comprised of two spacecraft riding together to Mercury The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) each have an orbiter onboard. ESA built the main spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), and JAXA supplied the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MIO). MPO will study the surface and internal composition of the planet, and MIO will study Mercury's magnetosphere – the region of space around the planet that is dominated by its magnetic field.