Bepi Colombo

Bepi Colombo

Bepi-Colombo is a space mission to explore Mercury and its environment, the result of a collaboration between the Europeans (ESA) and Japanese (JAXA) space agencies, through two space probes MPO (Mercury Planetary Orbiter, ESA) and MMO (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, JAXA) which left together for Mercury in 2018, for an expected arrival in 2025.

Artist’s view of Bepi Colombo approaching Mercury

The MMO probe will allow the detailed study of Mercury’s magnetosphere and its interaction with the solar wind.

The MMO probe instruments

The LPC2E is involved in the design and operation of one of the experiments of the Plasma Wave Investigation (PWI) consortium onboard the MMO probe. The AM2P experiment is designed to measure the plasma density in the Mercury environment.

Contact LPC2E : Pierre.Henri@cnrs-orleans.fr