BepiColombo launched towards Mercure!

The BepiColombo mission (ESA/JAXA) lifted off from Kourou on Friday, October 19, 2018 at 10:45 p.m. (Guyana local time). The technical and administrative teams of IRAP were able to immortalize and share (video: https://youtu.be/_Exr4QboRtQ) this emotional moment during which the instruments (MEA – Mercury Electron Analyzer on the Japanese satellite MIO; SERENA – Search for Exospheric Refilling and Emitted Natural Abundances Experiment on the European satellite BEPI) on which the laboratory and our partners have worked together for more than fifteen years.

The first ongoing operations on the mission and the BEPI satellite are proceeding nominally, we are now looking forward to the first operations on the MIO satellite which will start on November 05 and the verification phase which will test the proper operation of the MEA instruments on November 24.