9 flybys?! And no "warp to encounter".
The stacked spacecraft left Earth with a hyperbolic excess velocity of 3.475 km/s (2.159 mi/s). Initially, the craft was placed in a heliocentric orbit similar to that of Earth. After both the spacecraft and Earth completed one and a half orbits, it returned to Earth to perform a gravity-assist maneuver and was deflected towards Venus.
Following its Earth flyby in April 2020, BepiColombo was briefly mistaken for a near-Earth asteroid, receiving the provisional designation 2020 GL2.
Two consecutive Venus flybys reduced the perihelion near to the Sun–Mercury distance with almost no need for thrust. A sequence of six Mercury flybys lowered the relative velocity to 1.76 km/s (1.09 mi/s). After the fourth Mercury flyby in 2024, the spacecraft is in an orbit similar to that of Mercury and remains in the general vicinity of the planet.
Yeah, Earth was a little distracted in April of 2020.
And then came the thruster issues:
On 15 May 2024, ESA reported an issue preventing the spacecraft's thrusters from operating at full power during a scheduled manoeuvre on 26 April 2024.[54] On 2 September 2024, ESA reported that to compensate for the reduced available thrust, a revised trajectory had been developed that would add 11 months to the cruise, delaying the expected arrival date from 5 December 2025 to November 2026.
What a ride! Very KSP.
The way Ap is drawn in at Mercury reminds me of airbraking at Kerbin.
So fucking cool. Hats off to the team.