2 spacecraft headed to Mercury are about to begin their long-awaited arrival for Europe and Japan — watch it live today

UPDATE for Sept. 3: BepiColombo mission to Mercury successfully began its arrival sequence at the innermost planet with two spacecraft, one from Europe and the other from Japan, separating from its Mercury Transport Module. See what's ahead for the BepiColombo mission here.The BepiColombo mission is finally getting ready to arrive at its exotic destination.BepiColombo launched in October 2018 and took a long, looping and highly circuitous route toward Mercury our solar system's innermost planet. That journey is now nearly over, and the mission is gearing up for arrival.BepiColombo's two science orbiters — one run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the other by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — will separate from their power and propulsion module on Thursday (Sept. 3) at around 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). You can watch that milestone live here at Space.com, courtesy of ESA, starting at 7:45 a.m. EDT (1145 GMT).

Artist's impression showing the Mercury Transfer Module (at bottom) separate from the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) composite spacecraft. (Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab)

BepiColombo’s Mercury arrival begins (Official ESA broadcast) - YouTube