AMSTERDAM – After years of development the BepiColombo spacecraft which will be heading to Mercury from autumn 2018 has at last taken to the air. On April 2018 the first elements of the BepiColombo hardware were loaded into an Antonov An-124 cargo plane for transport from Amsterdam´s Schiphol Airport to the European Spaceport Kourou in French Guiana. After a fuelling stop in the Azores Islands the Antonov will arrive early on 24 April. This Antonov flight was the first of four flights needed to … [Read more...] about ESA´s BepiColombo takes to the Air