Short answers, pulled from the story.
BepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency built to study the planet Mercury. It comprises two orbiters launched together, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Mio.
BepiColombo launched on the 20th of October 2018 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. Its total cost was estimated in 2017 at two billion US dollars.
The mission is named after Giuseppe Bepi Colombo, an Italian scientist, mathematician and engineer at the University of Padua who lived from 1920 to 1984. He first proposed the interplanetary gravity assist manoeuvre later used by the 1974 Mariner 10 mission.
BepiColombo's Mercury orbit insertion is planned for November 2026. The arrival was delayed from an original target of the 5th of December 2025 after thruster issues discovered in September 2024.
On the 15th of May 2024, ESA reported that the spacecraft's thrusters could not reach full power during a scheduled maneuver on the 26th of April 2024. Engineers built a revised trajectory that added eleven months to the cruise.
The Mercury Surface Element was a planned 44 kilogram lander designed to operate on Mercury's surface for about one week. It was cancelled in 2003 due to budgetary constraints.