Joint Europe-Japan Mission to Mercury Blasts Off

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Europe’s first mission to Mercury, built in cooperation with the Japanese space agency JAXA, was launched on board an Ariane 5 rocket from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana on October 19.

The BepiColombo mission includes two spacecraft, a planetary orbiter and a magnetospheric orbiter, which, according to the European Space Agency, will need to deal with temperatures above 350°C during their year-long mission around the closest planet to the sun. Credit: European Space Agency via Storyful