The Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter MIO Is Collaborating With Miorine From THE WITCH FROM MERCURY! Posters and Audio Released Today!

The Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter MIO and Miorine Rembran from Mobile Suit Gundam THE WITCH FROM MERCURY are collaborating, and today, Thursday, June 29, a poster and audio message to support the mission have been released.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) MIO is now on the joint Japanese-European large-scale mission International Mission for the Study of Mercury BepiColombo together with the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), to operate all-encompassing surveys of Mercury.

The Ariane 5 rocket carrying the two explorers was launched on Friday, October 19, 2018 from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. It is now en route to Mercury, where it is supposed to land in December 2025. It is supposed to have a total of nine swing-by maneuvers, and it has already completed six: one with the Earth, two with Venus, and three with Mercury. The third swing-by maneuver with Mercury was operated on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, and just like the previous two, it shortened its distance with the surface of Mercury to 236 km.

The BepiColombo mission will be the first in the world to orbit two explorers around the planet. Once the electric propulsion module ends its task, it will break up and launch MIO first and MPO afterwards into the Mercurian orbit. That’s when surveying will start.

Let’s root for the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter MIO together with Mobile Suit Gundam THE WITCH FROM MERCURY!