Europe is uncertain whether its ambitious Mercury probe can reach the planet

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This week the European Space Agency posted a slightly ominous note regarding its BepiColombo spacecraft, which consists of two orbiters bound for Mercury.

The problem was first noted on April 26, when the spacecraft's primary propulsion system was scheduled to undertake an orbital maneuver.

The critical question is, at this power level, can BepiColombo still perform its primary task of reaching orbit around Mercury?

What is clear, she said, is that the current thrust level can support the next critical milestone, BepiColombo's fourth Mercury swing-by, which is due to occur on September 5 of this year.

"This swing-by sequence provides a braking delta-V of 2.4 km/s and provides a change of velocity vector direction with respect to the Sun as required for the trajectory end game in 2025," Montagnon said.

This transfer module is scheduled to be jettisoned from the rest of the stack in October 2025, and after that the remaining Mercury approach and orbit insertion maneuvers will be carried out with the chemical propulsion subsystem of the European MPO spacecraft.

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