Potentially serious problem on BepiColombo Mercury mission
According to the European Space Agency (ESA), engineers have discovered what could be a potentially serious problem on BepiColombo mission that is presently on its way to Mercury.
The solar arrays and electric propulsion system on the Mercury Transfer Module are used to generate thrust during the spacecraft’s complex journey from Earth to Mercury.
However, on 26 April, as BepiColombo was scheduled to begin its next manoeuvre, the Transfer Module failed to deliver enough electrical power to the spacecraft’s thrusters.
A combined team from ESA and the mission’s industrial partners set to work the moment the issue was identified. By 7 May, they had restored BepiColombo’s thrust to approximately 90% of its previous level. However, the Transfer Module’s available power is still lower than it should be, and so full thrust cannot yet be restored.
The press release implies that this issue won’t prevent the spacecraft from entering orbit around Mercury as scheduled in December 2025, but one wonders how that could be if it doesn’t have sufficient power to do the proper course correction during its last major flyby of Mercury in September 2024. If it misses its precise route in ’24 it could miss Mercury entirely in ’25.
Engineers are analyzing the situation to see what can be done to get it to Mercury, while also trying to figure out what caused this power problem in the first place in order to fix it.