{"id":10931,"date":"2021-10-04T18:44:56","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T10:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/bepicolombo-gets-first-glimpse-of-mercury\/"},"modified":"2021-10-04T18:44:56","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T10:44:56","slug":"bepicolombo-gets-first-glimpse-of-mercury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/bepicolombo-gets-first-glimpse-of-mercury\/","title":{"rendered":"BepiColombo gets first glimpse of Mercury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GdOLeGeqAEI\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft swept past Mercury Friday in the first of six high-speed flybys to gradually set up the probe\u2019s trajectory for a critical maneuver in 2025 to enter orbit around the solar system\u2019s innermost planet.<\/p>\n<p>Since its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018, BepiColombo has completed a slingshot maneuver around Earth and two flybys of Venus to bend its orbit around the sun closer to Mercury. The encounter with Mercury Friday was the first time BepiColombo visited its ultimate destination, but scientists will have to wait four more years for a full examination of the scorchingly hot planet.<\/p>\n<p>BepiColombo zipped just 123 miles (199 kilometers) above Mercury\u2019s airless surface at 7:34 p.m. EDT (2334 GMT) Friday, speeding by the planet barely seven weeks after flying by Venus, according to the European Space Agency.<\/p>\n<p>The flybys use each planet\u2019s gravity to alter BepiColombo\u2019s flight path, reducing the velocity change needed from the spacecraft\u2019s propulsion system.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft\u2019s high-speed sojourn through the inner solar system will continue with another flyby of Mercury next June 23. More encounters with Mercury are scheduled in 2023, 2024, and 2025, culminating in a rocket maneuver Dec. 5, 2025, to enter orbit around the planet.<\/p>\n<p>BepiColombo consists of a European component called the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and an element called the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter supplied by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The $1.8 billion mission is the second designed to orbit Mercury, following NASA\u2019s MESSENGER spacecraft, which circled the planet from 2011 until 2015.<\/p>\n<p>The flyby Friday provided scientists the first up-close views of Mercury since MESSENGER\u2019s mission ended six years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe flyby was flawless from the spacecraft point of view, and it\u2019s incredible to finally see our target planet,\u201d said Elsa Montagnon, ESA\u2019s BepiColombo spacecraft operations manager.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_53616\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-53616\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-53616\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bepi_mercury1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"1200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bepi_mercury1.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bepi_mercury1-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bepi_mercury1-678x678.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bepi_mercury1-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/bepi_mercury1-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-53616\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A monitoring camera on the BepiColombo spacecraft\u2019s Mercury Transfer Module captured this view of Mercury from a distance of about 1,502 miles (2,418 kilometers) during a flyby Oct. 1. The spacecraft\u2019s 8.2-foot-long (2.5-meter) magnetometer boom is pictured in the foreground. Many of Mercury\u2019s craters can be identified in this image, including&nbsp;Lermontov crater, which looks bright because it contains features unique to Mercury called \u2018hollows\u2019 where volatile elements are escaping to space. It also contains a vent where volcanic explosions have occurred. Credit: ESA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The European and Japanese orbiters are accompanied by the Mercury Transfer Module. The propulsion unit carries large solar arrays to generate power for the mission\u2019s ion thrusters, which help reshape BepiColombo\u2019s orbit between planetary flybys.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly before BepiColombo enters orbit around Mercury, the transfer module will jettison from the spacecraft stack. The planetary orbiter will fire thrusters to brake into orbit, then release the Japanese spacecraft to begin its own science mission.<\/p>\n<p>BepiColombo\u2019s European-built science orbiter will map Mercury and study the planet\u2019s geologic history, while the Japanese component of the mission will observe the solar wind\u2019s influence on Mercury.<\/p>\n<p>During Friday\u2019s flyby, two of the three black-and-white monitoring cameras on the Mercury Transfer Module were active, taking pictures of the planet during BepiColombo\u2019s approach and departure. Some portions of the spacecraft are visible in the images.<\/p>\n<p>The spacecraft\u2019s closest approach to Mercury occurred over the planet\u2019s night side, when darkness precluded pictures. The closest image from the flyby was taken at a distance of about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers), ESA said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34991\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34991\" style=\"width: 1920px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34991\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/web.space_.spaceesploration.bepicolombo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/web.space_.spaceesploration.bepicolombo.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/web.space_.spaceesploration.bepicolombo-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/web.space_.spaceesploration.bepicolombo-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/web.space_.spaceesploration.bepicolombo-678x381.jpg 678w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34991\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Artist\u2019s concept of the BepiColombo spacecraft. Credit: Airbus Defense and Space<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Some of the mission\u2019s scientific instruments were collecting data during the flyby Friday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was an incredible feeling seeing these almost-live pictures of Mercury,\u201d said Valetina Galluzzi, co-investigator of BepiColombo\u2019s SIMBIO-SYS imaging system that will be used once in Mercury orbit. \u201cIt really made me happy meeting the planet I have been studying since the very first years of my research career, and I am eager to work on new Mercury images in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The SIMBIO-SYS camera system on the European orbiter will capture color and images of Mercury in high-resolution, but the instrument\u2019s field-of-view is blocked by the Japanese orbiter, meaning it won\u2019t get its first view of the planet until after BepiColombo enters orbit in December 2025.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was very exciting to see BepiColombo\u2019s first images of Mercury, and to work out what we were seeing,\u201d said David Rothery of the UK\u2019s Open University, head of ESA\u2019s Mercury Surface and Composition Working Group, in a statement. \u201cIt has made me even more enthusiastic to study the top quality science data that we should get when we are in orbit around Mercury, because this is a planet that we really do not yet fully understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><i>Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff The European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft swept past Mercury Friday in the first of six high-speed flybys to gradually set up the probe\u2019s trajectory for a critical maneuver in 2025 to enter orbit around the solar system\u2019s innermost planet. Since its launch on an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018, BepiColombo has completed a slingshot maneuver around [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}