Mercury Transfer Module
This ESA-built Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) is carrying BepiColombo's two orbiters – ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO, or Mio) – to Mercury using solar-electric propulsion.
MTM’s ion thrusters are used during the cruise phase for delivering the two spacecraft to Mercury.
The high performance of the propulsion system, in terms of the amount of fuel the thrusters require, is critical. Inert xenon gas is fed in to the thrusters, where electrons are first stripped off the xenon atoms. The resulting electrically charged atoms, referred to as ions, are then focused and ejected out of the thrusters using a high voltage grid system at a velocity of 50 000 meters per second.
This exhaust velocity is 15 times greater than conventional chemical rocket thrusters, allowing a dramatic reduction in the amount of propellant required to achieve the mission.
Read more about the journey to Mercury here.
Additionally, MTM carries three 'monitoring cameras' (M-CAMs). These provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution, allowing us to monitor the health of some spacecraft components. Throughout the mission's journey to Mercury, these M-CAMs have also captured images of Earth, Venus and Mercury.
