{"id":12562,"date":"2020-03-30T22:39:12","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T14:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/lean-team-readies-esas-mercury-bound-bepicolombo-for-planetary-flyby\/"},"modified":"2020-03-30T22:39:12","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T14:39:12","slug":"lean-team-readies-esas-mercury-bound-bepicolombo-for-planetary-flyby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/lean-team-readies-esas-mercury-bound-bepicolombo-for-planetary-flyby\/","title":{"rendered":"Lean team readies ESA\u2019s Mercury-bound BepiColombo for planetary flyby"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Artist\u2019s illustration of the BepiColombo spacecraft during its gravity assist flyby of Earth. Credit: ESA\/ATG Medialab<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One job deemed essential by the European Space Agency during the coronavirus pandemic involves shepherding the BepiColombo spacecraft through a high-speed flyby of planet Earth next month, an immovable event on the $1.8 billion mission\u2019s seven-year journey to Mercury.<\/p>\n

The priority assigned to BepiColombo\u2019s April 10 flyby means a limited team of engineers will be stationed inside the European Space Operations Center, located in Darmstadt, Germany, to oversee the spacecraft\u2019s passage by Earth.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, other ESA science missions have suspended regular operations after officials reduced workforce levels at the control center in Germany. Last week, ESA announced the first positive test result for the COVID-19 coronavirus among the workforce at ESOC.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur priority is the health of our workforce, and we will therefore reduce activity on some of our scientific missions, especially on interplanetary spacecraft, which currently require the highest number of personnel on site,\u201d said Rolf Densing, ESA\u2019s director of operations, in a March 24 statement.<\/p>\n

ESA said it was suspending instrument operations on four solar system science missions, including the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, which launched last month from Cape Canaveral. Solar Orbiter is on the first leg of a mission that will use a series of gravity assist flybys of Venus and Earth to slingshot closer to the sun, eventually arriving in an orbit to image the sun\u2019s poles for the first time.<\/p>\n

When the coronavirus pandemic impacted operations at ESOC, Solar Orbiter was not yet finished with its post-launch commissioning and instrument checkouts.<\/p>\n

\u201cESA expects to resume these operations in the near future, in line with the development of the coronavirus situation,\u201d the agency said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Other ESA missions that have paused science operations are the four Cluster spacecraft orbiting Earth to investigate our planet\u2019s magnetic environment, the Mars Express spacecraft that has orbited the red planet since 2003, and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which arrived in orbit around Mars in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese have stable orbits and long mission durations, so turning off their science instruments and placing them into a largely unattended safe configuration for a certain period will have a negligible impact on their overall mission performance,\u201d Densing said in a statement.<\/p>\n

But BepiColombo is coming up on a major milestone on its 5.5-billion-mile (8.9-billion-kilometer) voyage to Mercury, where the mission is scheduled to arrive in December 2025. BepiColombo launched in October 2018 and is on track for its first planetary flyby April 10.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft will use Earth\u2019s gravity to bend its trajectory inward toward the sun, taking aim on Venus for the mission\u2019s next gravity assist maneuver Oct. 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the last time we will see BepiColombo from Earth,\u201d said Joe Zender, BepiColombo\u2019s deputy project scientist at ESA. \u201cAfter that it will head deeper into the inner solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A view inside the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany. Credit: ESA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Personnel at ESOC will maintain social distancing guidelines throughout the flyby, according to ESA. While some employees at the control center can work remotely, the high-stakes, fast-paced planetary encounter April 10 requires some staff to work onsite.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Earth swing-by is a phase where we need daily contact with the spacecraft,\u201d said Elsa Montagnon, BepiColombo spacecraft operations manager at ESA. \u201cThis is something that we cannot postpone. The spacecraft will swing by Earth independently in any case.\u201d<\/p>\n

BepiColombo consists of two orbiters \u2014 one from Europe and one from Japan \u2014 connected with a transfer module to generate solar power and generate thrust from four ion engines.<\/p>\n

Once at Mercury, the European Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Japanese Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter will separate to enter their own orbits and perform independent measurements at the solar system\u2019s innermost planet.<\/p>\n

At the time of closest approach April 10, BepiColombo will reach a point roughly 7,900 miles (12,700 kilometers) from Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the critical two weeks prior to the closest approach, we need to upload safety commands to prepare the spacecraft for unexpected problems,\u201d says Christoph Steiger, BepiColombo deputy spacecraft pperations manager. \u201cFor example, we need to prepare the transfer module for the 34 minute-long eclipse when its solar panels will not be exposed to sunlight to prevent battery discharge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists want to use BepiColombo\u2019s flyby with Earth to test some of the spacecraft\u2019s scientific instruments.<\/p>\n

For example, an ultraviolet spectroscope on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter will observe the moon to help calibrate the instrument\u2019s settings before arriving at Mercury.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also want to make some measurements of the solar wind and its interaction with Earth\u2019s magnetic field,\u201d said Johannes Benkhoff, ESA\u2019s project scientist for the BepiColombo mission. \u201cThe main purpose of having the instruments on at this stage, however, is testing and calibration. If we can use the data for some scientific investigation, it will be a bonus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three on-board \u201cselfie\u201d cameras \u2014 positioned to see parts of the spacecraft\u2019s antennas and solar panel \u2014 will take a series of images as BepiColombo approaches Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will see the Earth approaching and getting bigger,\u201d Zender said. \u201cWhen it reaches the nearest point, we will take a few images, and then we are planning to capture a whole sequence of photographs over several hours looking at the Earth-moon system as it gets smaller and smaller until we lose it completely.\u201d<\/p>\n

BepiColombo will next encounter Venus on Oct. 15, and then again in August 2021. Those gravity assist maneuvers will set up a sequence of six flybys with Mercury before entering orbit around the rocky world in December 2025.<\/p>\n

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

Besides the four ESA missions no longer collecting science data, officials said ESA\u2019s coronavirus protection measures at ESOC have not affected any other spacecraft operations.<\/p>\n

ESA\u2019s astronomy and Earth observation missions are able to continue with just a single technician in the control room at ESOC, the agency said. Other support functions for those mission can be accomplished remotely.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s illustration of the BepiColombo spacecraft during its gravity assist flyby of Earth. Credit: ESA\/ATG Medialab One job deemed essential by the European Space Agency during the coronavirus pandemic involves shepherding the BepiColombo spacecraft through a high-speed flyby of planet Earth next month, an immovable event on the $1.8 billion mission\u2019s seven-year journey to Mercury. […]<\/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":[1657,2039,2010,2259,831,2040,2041,2042],"class_list":["post-12562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-airbus-defense-and-space","tag-bepicolombo","tag-coronavirus","tag-esoc","tag-european-space-agency","tag-mercury","tag-mercury-magnetospheric-orbiter","tag-mercury-planetary-orbiter"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12562"}],"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=12562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}