Astounding how precisely successful this maneuver appears! Question: how close did the actual flyby match the calculations in terms of effect on the spacecraft's speed and course? Or was there a ballpark/range predicted based on how precisely we know Mercury's mass and orbit?

JRehling: "At global resolution, Messenger has given us a complete map of Mercury that leaves little to improve upon. However, BepiColombo will nonetheless perform a great deal of original science"

Messenger certainly gave excellent results, but there is much that can be improved on. Messenger had an orbit which gave low passes over the north pole and high passes over the south, so imaging and all datasets were better in the north than in the south. As an example, the laser altimeter was unable to collect data over much of the southern hemisphere, so the global topo map is less accurate in the south where only stereoscopic imaging is available (stereo gives great detail but it needs altimetry to determine the location in space of the stereo model). BepiColombo will improve on many of Messenger;s datasets in the south. And the high resolution imager will greatly extend the limited high resolution mapping by Messenger.

Phil

JAXA's flyby webcast and ESA Operations tweets reminded me how cool it would have been if we had got, among others, real-time temperature readings through ESA's BepiColombo Quick-Look Analysis web interface during the flyby, but alas!

did any of the images from the flyby image the south at all?

Not better than this:
https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/search/map/Me...aic_Global_166m

Video including some more distant departure views (overexposed, but still neat!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdOLeGeqAEI

It seems BepiColombo experienced a Safe Mode event sometimes during Christmas holidays between 23.12.2021 and 05.01.2022 (no pass was scheduled during this period). So far all we know is that a "Safe Mode recovery extra pass" was requested on 05.01 and carried out on 07.01.2022.

Nothing new on their social media, either. Must have been very minor.

Not too surprising, ESA so far has shown no intention to provide the general public with timely updates on BepiColombo spacecraft operations and status, besides PR coverage of flybys. Having said that, in this article summing up the first 2.5 years (until May 2021) of flight operations we learn that up to this point, BepiColombo experienced only three unplanned safe modes, all in the first few months of the expedition, so at least in this regard a safe mode would be a notable event.

BepiColombo is going to enter superior solar conjunction (SSC), and so starts the second observation session for the BepiColombo Solar Conjunction Experiment (SCE) to test General Relativity (GR).

A strange dark streak with greyish "halo" appeared on BepiColombo's High-Gain Antenna (HGA). Unfortunately, the front side of the HGA is rarely imaged by the MCAM3 monitoring camera. In an image taken on 09 Aug 2019 and earlier images everything is fine; then, however, in an oblique view taken on 18 Oct 2020 a dark spot can be seen tentatively at the edge of the HGA dish, the same spot and entire streak is clearly visible on the next image taken on 07 Apr 2021. The dark streak together with the greyish background doesn't seem to change over time when comparing with the most recent available image taken on 09 Dec 2021. Because of thermal control reasons great care was taken in the development and testing of the NV14 ceramic white coating of the HGA and thus coating deterioration by contamination/irradiation processes is unlikely, I think.

This is an interesting information. Can you please check what is causing the error

"https://archives.esac.esa.int/psa/APP/connector/0/4291/url/cam_raw_sc_cam3_browse_20210809t223002_61_f__t0005.jpeg" cannot be displayed because it contains errors."

in all but the third link? Thanks.
Fernando

OK, that's funny?!?! The image links have changed and will probably keep changing (very useful). Please, try this direct link to the MCAM instrument archive and search with the image identifiers, e.g. 20210809t223002_61_f__t0005. Below I have attached the most crucial images taken on 2021-12-09, 2021-08-09, 2020-10-18, 2021-04-07 and for better comparison an additional image from 2019-05-14 respectively.

Perhaps a coincidence, but the streak has a similar size and shape (but not location) to the shadow that some of the antenna gear is casting in some of those photos.

Thanks for the tip.
I found it best to set the number of images per page to a high number(500?) and search for just this part of the image label "20210809t223002_61_f__t0005".

Fernando