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The delta-v demand for achieving Mercury orbit exceeds what it takes to send a spacecraft past Pluto.
The closer a probe falls toward the Sun, the faster it travels; arriving at Mercury with enough controlled speed for the planet's gravity to capture a spacecraft into orbit requires more propulsive work than a Pluto flyby.
That arithmetic shaped every design choice in the European Space Agency's BepiColombo, and this week the nearly $2 billion mission cleared a major milestone in the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to the Solar System's innermost planet.
The engineering behind an eight-year approach Launched in 2018, BepiColombo has spiraled closer to the Sun using a combination of plasma propulsion and a sequence of gravity-assist flybys at Earth, Venus, and Mercury.
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