The BepiColombo spacecraft, linked to Mercury, today took its second look at its target planet during a very close overflight designed to slow down the spacecraft and adjust its trajectory.
BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The mission, consisting of two orbits traveling to Wednesday stacked on top of each other, released in orbit around the sun in 2018. Since then, ground controllers have been adjusting the spacecraft’s trajectory through a series of nine overflight maneuvers (one on Earth, two on Venus and six on Mercury itself), to gradually brake BepiColombo so that it can enter orbit around the solar systemthe most intimate planet of the year 2025.
The June 23 overflight was the second of BepiColombo in Mercury, after the probe first encounter with the planet in October 2021. The probe made its closest approach to the surface of Mercury at 5:44 am EDT (0944 GMT), when it passed just 125 miles (200 kilometers) from the crater-plagued surface of Mercury, closer than the two orbiters will work once the mission really begins.
Related: Mercury looks stunning in this first overflight photo of the BepiColombo mission from Europe and Japan.
The spacecraft was taking images of the planet burned during the flyby with its low-resolution monitoring cameras that are mounted on the spacecraft’s transfer module. ESA released the first image about four hours after the nearest approach, revealing large impact craters that include a 120-mile (200 km) basin.
The two orbits carry 16 scientific instruments together, but only 60 percent of them were operational during the 48 hours around the closest approach, Johannes Benkhoff, a scientist at ESA’s BepiColombo project, told Space. as in an email. The rest, including high-resolution cameras, cannot be operated in the cruise setup, as they are hidden by the spacecraft’s transfer module or its parasol.
Benkhoff said the spacecraft’s magnetometers and particle detectors were turned on during the flyby and will likely generate valuable scientific data about the solar wind around Mercury.
During this flyby, BepiColombo approached Mercury from the night side, Benkhoff noted, meaning the image could only begin 4 minutes after the nearest approach, when the planet was bright enough. At the time, the probe was about 500 miles (800 km) away from the surface of Mercury.
The images, which ESA plans to publish within about a day, are expected to reveal craters and tectonic faults on the sun-burned surface of Mercury.
“Even during fleeting overflights, these scientific‘ empowerments ’are extremely valuable,” Benkhoff said in an ESA. statement (opens in a new tab). “We can fly our world-class science lab through diverse and unexplored parts of Mercury’s environment that we won’t have access to once in orbit, while at the same time starting with preparations to make sure we move to Earth. main scientific mission. as fast and smoothly as possible “.
BepiColombo is only the second spacecraft in history built to orbit Mercury, after NASA messenger mission, which studied the small rocky planet between 2011 and 2015. (Although in the 1970s, NASA Mariner 10 made three flights over Mercury while orbiting the Mercury ground and took the first images of the planet).
Mercury is a strange world where temperatures reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (420 degrees Celsius) in parts exposed to the sun, but where, at the same time, scientists believe water ice it remains in permanently shaded craters around the poles.
Mercury, although geologically dead at first glance, also shows signs of some form of tectonic activityand the sport is amazing magnetic field which scientists so far cannot fully explain. Many of these mysteries were discovered by Messenger, and scientists hope that BepiColombo will provide the missing answers.
(Image credit: ESA)
BepiColombo still has four overflights left before finally being put into orbit around Mercury. The next overflight will occur in a year. Meanwhile, next month, BepiColombo will make the closest approach to the sun of its entire mission.
Getting to Mercury is notoriously difficult, harder than getting to the giant planets far away Jupiter i Saturn. The reason for this is that the sun gravity it constantly accelerates any Mercury-bound probe, which needs to spill energy and speed, hence the long, winding journey of planetary overflights.
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