BepiColombo sheds its ride and starts the final glide to Mercury

After nearly eight years, ESA and JAXA's BepiColombo spacecraft is finally nearing Mercury, as engineers begin the arrival sequence by jettisoning the power module that got it this far. The spacecraft stack separated from the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) on September 3 at around 1400 CEST. After a tense few minutes, controllers confirmed that a preliminary Doppler signal had been detected, indicating that the MTM had separated successfully; by 1552 CEST, it was confirmed that signals had been p