Venus flyby on the way to Mercury

One of the instruments on board BepiColombo: The mass spectrometer STROFIO before installation in the calibration chamber at the Physics Insitute at the University of Bern. University of Bern © University of Bern - The space probe BepiColombo, which is on its way to Mercury, will fly past Venus on October 15, 2020 - one of the deceleration maneuvers to bring the probe into orbit in front of Mercury. BepiColombo has instruments on board which were designed and built at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern. Data is now being collected on Venus on the way to Mercury using other instruments that the Bern researchers are involved in. On Saturday, October 20, 2018, the BepiColombo space probe set off on its journey to Mercury from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The 6.40 meters high and 4.1 tons heavy BepiColombo space probe consists of two spacecraft: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), which was constructed by the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), which was constructed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA. Both spacecraft will fly to Mercury together as a coupled system, but will be put onto separate orbits upon arrival.