Europe’s first mission to Mercury will soon be ready for shipping to the spaceport to begin final preparations for launch. The mission passed a major review on March 8, meaning that the three BepiColombo spacecraft, along with ground equipment and mission experts, are confirmed to start the move from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) center in the Netherlands to Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at the end of April. The launch window is open from October 5 until November 29.

“It’s been a long and occasionally bumpy road to this point, and there is still plenty to do until we are ready for launch,” says Ulrich Reininghaus, ESA’s BepiColombo project manager, “but we are extremely pleased to finally move our preparations to the launch site, and are grateful to everyone who has made this possible. In parallel we are continuing with some long-duration firing tests on a replica transfer module thruster, under space-like conditions, to be best prepared for our journey to Mercury.”

Once at Kourou, an intensive six months of essential preparation are needed, including more review checkpoints. Work includes dressing the spacecraft in protective insulation to prepare for the harsh space environment and extreme temperatures they will experience operating close to the Sun, attaching and testing the solar wings and their deployment mechanisms, installing the sunshield, fueling, and connecting the three spacecraft together. The final weeks will see the spacecraft stack inside the Ariane 5 rocket fairing, and preparing the launch vehicle itself, ready to blast the mission on a seven-year journey around the inner solar system to investigate Mercury’s mysteries.

A transfer module will carry two science orbiters to the innermost planet, using a combination of solar power, electric propulsion, and nine gravity-assist flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury to set it on course. The two orbiters will make complementary measurements of the innermost planet and its environment from different orbits, from its deep interior to its interaction with the solar wind, to provide the best understanding of Mercury to date, and how the innermost planet of a solar system forms and evolves close to its parent star.

For more information, visit http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo/.