How to follow BepiColombo's launch

It’s been a long stretch of few launches to destinations other than the Moon, Sun, Mars, and asteroids, so I’m thrilled to be anticipating the beginning of a new mission to Mercury. And what an ambitious mission! BepiColombo will deliver two science spacecraft to the innermost planet, propelled there by a third ion-powered ship.


There’s a fabulous mission preview in the most recent issue of The Planetary Report, and I won’t repeat those contents here. This post is just about how to follow the launch. Here’s a timeline, converted to various time zones, copied from the mission press kit and the Arianespace launch press kit (PDF). Jason Davis will be tweeting, and it's also worth following various mission Twitter feeds: @BepiColombo, @ESAOperations, @ESAScience, @JAXA_en, @JAXA_MMO, @ESA_Bepi, and @ESA_MTM. Best wishes to ESA and JAXA for a totally nominal launch!

By the way, in case you don't notice it in the table below: There are monitoring cameras on the Mercury Transfer Module that should get us photos of the deployed solar arrays and antennas at 12 and 36 hours after launch, respectively. Stay tuned for those!