- 4622 - MERCURY - new mysteries to discover? - Spacecraft carrying European and Japanese probes passed closer to Mercury than originally planned overnight after thruster problems delayed the mission to study the little-known, sun-scorched planet. The “BepiColombo mission” launched in 2018 on a winding path that had been intended to enter the orbit of the planet closest to the sun in December 2025.
--------------------------------- 4622 - MERCURY - new mysteries to discover?
- In April, 2024, a glitch with the spacecraft's thrusters
sapped some of its power supply, forcing teams on the ground to change its
trajectory and delaying its arrival until November 2026. The new path meant the spacecraft needed to
fly 22 miles closer to the planet than initially planned, passing just 165
kilometers above the surface, during its latest flyby.
-
- This was the fourth of six planned flybys
of Mercury on the mission's nine-billion-kilometer journey before it can
finally settle into the planet's orbit.
Most of the time Mercury is closer to Earth than Mars. The red planet can be reached by missions
from Earth in just seven months.
-
- Mercury is "the most difficult"
planet for probes to reach. The
planet's relatively tiny mass, it is only slightly bigger than the moon, means
its gravitational pull is extremely weak compared to the sun, making it tricky
for satellites to stay in its orbit. It
takes much more energy to brake and stop at Mercury than to go to Mars.
-
- This is where delicate maneuvers called
Z”gravitational assists” come in. These slingshots around celestial bodies
allow spacecraft to speed up, slow down, or change trajectory. A glitch with the electric thrusters means
the spacecraft is now operating with only 90 percent of its planned power
supply.
-
- After months spent investigating the
problem, the thrusters will "remain operating below the minimum thrust
required for an insertion into orbit around Mercury in December 202."
-
- The new slower path means BepiColombo is now
planned to enter orbit in November 2026.
NASA's Mariner 10 was the first probe to capture a close picture of its
lunar-looking surface in 1974. No
spacecraft had orbited the planet until the MESSENGER probe arrived in 2011.
-
- The NASA mission confirmed "some
rather bizarre things. One of these
"oddities" is that Mercury is the only rocky planet other than Earth
to have a magnetic field. Exactly how it has such a magnetic field so close to
the sun is not fully understood.
-
- Another "oddity" is that Mercury's
iron core composes 60 percent of its mass, compared to only a third for
Earth. Mercury's surface is also marked
by "hollows," which could suggest relatively recent geologic
activity.
-
- Also unclear is the composition of minerals
on covering the planet's surface, which is blasted with intense radiation from
the sun.
-
- The spacecraft carries two separate
satellites, one from the ESA and another from Japan's JAXA space agency, which
have a total of 16 scientific instruments.
-
November 25, 2024 MERCURY - new
mysteries to discover? 4622
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--------------------- --- Monday, November 25,
2024
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