After nearly eight years of crossing the inner solar system, the BepiColombo mission—a collaboration between Europe and Japan—has entered its final approach to Mercury, the least-explored of the terrestrial planets. On September 3, 2026, the spacecraft shed its transfer module more than 200 million kilometers from Earth, a silent and irreversible act performed without the possibility of human intervention. What follows is not merely an arrival, but the beginning of a sustained attempt to understand a small, ancient world whose secrets have long resisted our curiosity.