On September 3, 2026, the BepiColombo mission (a joint ESA-JAXA project) successfully separated its Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) from the main spacecraft stack. This marks the start of a complex, multi-month sequence to place two scientific orbiters around Mercury. The remaining stack will enter orbit around the innermost planet on November 21, 2026. Later, the two orbiters — ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio) — will separate: Mio will go into a highly elliptical polar orbit, while MPO will adjust to its final orbit by March 2027. Full scientific observations are scheduled to begin in April 2027.
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