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The ESA-JAXA joint mission BepiColombo is now on the track to Mercury. After the successful launch of the two spacecraft for BepiColombo, Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter: MMO) and Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), commissioning operations of the spacecraft and their science payloads were completed. BepiColombo will arrive at Mercury in the end of 2025, and it has 7-years cruise with the heliocentric distance range of 0.3-1.2 AU. The long cruise phase also includes 9 planetary flybys: once at the Earth, twice at Venus, and 6 times at Mercury. Even before arrival, we already obtained fruitful science data from Mercury during three Mercury flybys completed on 1 October 2021, 23 June 2022, and 19 June 2023. We performed science observations with almost all the instruments onboard Mio and successfully obtained comprehensive data of Mercurys magnetosphere such as magnetic fields, plasma particles, and waves. Here we present the updated status of BepiColombo/Mio, initial results of the science observations during the Mercury flybys, and the upcoming observation plans.
Murakami et al. (Sat,) studied this question.