Alrighty, here we go! Cosmic Girl, with LauncherOne underwing, has taken off from the runway at Mojave Air and Space Port. We’re flying out to what will be the drop point for our upcoming Launch Demo.

How do you feel when you see this❓🌏 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ These is the last view BepiColombo had of all of us, and the Moon – the tiny speck of light on the right side appearing behind the solar array in the image taken at 09:03 UTC – after its Earth flyby on 10 April 2020. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Images in the sequence were taken in 10-minute intervals from 17:13 UTC on 10 April until 13:19 UTC on 11 April 2020, as the distance to Earth increased from around 218 000 km to 524 200 km. One of the solar arrays is visible on the right side of the images, and the structure in the bottom corner is one of the sun sensor units on the MTM, covered in multi-layered insulation. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ The 10 April flyby at Earth was the first of nine gravity-assist manoeuvres that BepiColombo will perform during its seven-year journey to Mercury. The spacecraft got as close as 12 700 km to Earth’s surface, closer than the orbit of Europe’s navigational satellites Galileo, and was observed by astronomers from many places across the world. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ BepiColombo…