BepiColombo’s Mercury Transfer Module separated from the stacked spacecraft on 3 September 2026, opening the arrival sequence for the joint European Space Agency and JAXA mission at Mercury. The separation occurred after the spacecraft traveled together through the inner Solar System for eight years. ESA called the operation the beginning of one of the most complex planetary arrival sequences the agency has ever attempted.
Engineers tracked the critical milestone from ESA’s European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany. The agency broadcast operations live from the Main Control Room, detailing the step-by-step separation timeline. According to ESA’s schedule, the live programme began at 13:45 CEST ahead of the 14:00 CEST separation of the module. The agency paused the broadcast at 14:30 CEST before resuming coverage at 15:30 CEST to await telemetry.
Ground controllers targeted 15:53 CEST as the earliest possible acquisition of signal to confirm spacecraft status. The broadcast concluded between 16:00 and 16:45 CEST after monitoring the initial post-separation signals. The mission stack had carried both the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the BepiColombo Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter throughout the eight-year journey alongside the transfer module.
ESA published a complete replay of the separation operations spanning two hours, 31 minutes, and 10 seconds. The agency made the footage available for download in standard and source MP4 video formats, measuring 746.17 megabytes and 1,020.25 megabytes respectively. Closed captions were provided through automated generation on the streaming player, alongside direct downloads outside of YouTube for archival distribution.
