British probe on seven-year mission to explore Mercury

A BRITISH space probe will be launched on Saturday on a seven-year, 5.2 billion-mile mission to Mercury.

It is one of two that will be carried on the BepiColombo rocket in the £1.4billion European Space Agency project.

The British probe was made by Airbus Space & Defence in Stevenage, Herts.

BepiColombo is powered by REVOLUTIONARY BepiColombo an ion electric propulsion drive supplied by British tech firm QinetiQ.

An Ariane 5 rocket will carry BepiColombo away from Earth and then release it to travel on its own. After flying around Earth, Venus and Mercury, it will land on the planet where temperatures hit 450C. Dr Jerry Bolter, from Airbus, said: “The ion drive needs just 581kg of propellant and does the equivalent of 17.8 million miles to the gallon.”