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3D PLUS has more than 220,000 microelectronics components in space, and more than 25 years of flight heritage with no reported failure. Our Flight Heritage is expanding continuously with products launched in Space every month in LEO, MEO and GEO orbits, for deep space exploration missions, for satellite constellation fleets, and for governmental missions in Europe, America, and Asia. Our Flagship missions include Mars 2020, Mars Science Laboratory, Rosetta, New Horizons, Juno, OneWeb, AlphaSat, Sentinel, Ariane 5, ISS, Parker Solar Probe, Insight, and many more.
Mercury is a planet of extremes. It is the closest world to the Sun, its surface swings between scorching days and freezing nights, and it is the least explored planet of the inner solar system. Only two missions have ever visited it, and neither has answered its most puzzling questions. On 3 September 2026, after nearly eight years in space, the ESA–JAXA BepiColombo mission took the first decisive step of its arrival: the Mercury Transfer Module, which has propelled the spacecraft since launch in October 2018, separated from the two science orbiters. The most challenging phase of the journey has begun.
BepiColombo is Europe’s first mission to Mercury and the first ever to place two dedicated spacecraft around the planet. It is a joint undertaking between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), supported by national partners including CNES. Two orbiters will study Mercury from complementary vantage points: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), which will map the planet’s surface and probe its interior, and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio), which will study the magnetic field and magnetosphere — the region of space shaped by Mercury’s magnetic environment. Together, they aim to answer questions that planetary scientists have debated for decades: why Mercury has a magnetic field at all, what its unusually large core is made of, and how the solar wind interacts with a planet so close to the Sun.
Reaching Mercury is hard; arriving there is harder. Travelling toward the Sun means gaining speed, so BepiColombo used a combination of solar electric propulsion and nine gravity assists around Earth, Venus and Mercury to slow down — a journey of eight years and billions of kilometres.
The arrival sequence now unfolds step by step. The orbiters are scheduled to be captured into Mercury orbit on 21 November 2026. Mio and MPO will then separate in December, each manoeuvring into its own polar science orbit, with routine science operations planned to begin in April 2027. At that point, two spacecraft will study one planet simultaneously for the first time — a milestone for comparative planetary science.
Space missions at Mercury demand electronics that survive intense heat and radiation while processing scientific data with precision. 3D PLUS has a documented role in this mission: between 2008 and 2010, the company developed the “Ampli-Bepi” system-in-package (SiP) for the French research laboratory CETP (Centre for the Study of Terrestrial and Planetary Environments, now part of LATMOS).
BepiColombo Mercury mission 3D PLUS SIP
A system-in-package integrates multiple electronic functions into a single compact module. In this case, the Ampli-Bepi SiP is a low-noise amplifier component: it boosts very weak signals without adding noise, a critical function for instruments that measure faint magnetic and plasma phenomena in Mercury’s environment.
The Ampli-Bepi is not the only 3D PLUS hardware associated with the mission. According to 3D PLUS’s mission records, other company modules are part of BepiColombo: SRAM and SDRAM memory chips that store data and code for onboard computers, EEPROM memory that retains critical information even when power is off, and Point-of-Load (PoL) converters, which step spacecraft power down to the precise, stable voltages sensitive electronics require. Each of these functions — remembering, storing and powering — belongs to the quiet infrastructure that keeps a spacecraft alive and its instruments listening.
By 2027, BepiColombo should be delivering the most detailed portrait of Mercury ever obtained. For the engineers and laboratories involved — including 3D PLUS — the arrival is the payoff of decades of development, and a Flight Heritage milestone written in orbit around the innermost planet.
