- 3613 - MERCURY - we sent a messenger to learn? Our space probe, “BepiColombo“, just flew passes the planet Mercury. But, it is going too fast to stop. It is scheduled to make six more passes around the Sun before settling down in Mercury orbit.
--------------------- 3613 - MERCURY - we sent a messenger to learn?
- We all know the planet Mercury is closest to the sun. The Sun’s gravity should help us send a space probe there. There is only Venus between us and Mercury. Getting there is not so hard using the Sun’s gravity as an assistant. But, stopping once you get there is not so easy.
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- The BepiColombo spacecraft on Thursday, June 23, 2022, passed just 200 kilometers from the surface of our innermost world. During that brief encounter, BepiColombo got a brief glimpse of its final destination.
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- This completes a second of six Mercury flybys. It will be back this time next year for the third before arriving into a Mercury orbit in 2025.
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- The spacecraft approached Mercury from the planet’s night side, then began imaging the cratered surface about five minutes after closest approach as the Sun rose over the illuminated terrain below.
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- This, the second Mercury flyby for the spacecraft of six overall that BepiColombo must perform before arriving in orbit around Mercury in December 2025. Launched on October 20, 2018, from Guiana Space Center atop an Ariane-5 rocket, the spacecraft also performed an Earth flyby on April 10, 2020, and two Venus flybys in 2020 and 2021.
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- Getting deep into the inner solar system and entering orbit around an inner planet is a complex and time-consuming process, as the spacecraft must bleed off momentum during each successive planetary flyby. It cannot not carry enough fuel to use thruster to slow down.
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- The probe is a stacked pair of satellites that will separate after orbital insertion, and will probe Mercury once science operations begin in 2026. The pair of probes will examine the planet from its core, interior and surface terrain, out through its magnetosphere and tenuous atmospheric sodium ‘tail’.
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- BepiColombo provided science observations during its first Mercury flyby on October 1, 2021, and we can expect to see more data gathered from this pass.
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- It is now the third spacecraft to reach Mercury, after the Mariner 10 flyby in 1973 and NASA’s Mercury Messenger in 2011 to 2015. The spacecraft will also become the second mission to enter orbit around Mercury, after Messenger.
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- BepiColombo will build upon data and science collected by Messenger, which completed its mission by crashing into Mercury on April 30, 2015, becoming the first human artifact to touch this innermost world.
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- The images from the second flyby reveal the ancient cratered surface of Mercury, appearing much like our own Moon. Prominent features such as the “Caloris Basin”, a massive 1,550 kilometer-wide impact feature are visible. The volcanic lavas around the basin are thought to predate the basin itself by several hundred million years, and could provide crucial clues to the geological history of Mercury.
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- You can see Mercury now low in the dawn sky in June, 2022, as the most challenging planet in the current dawn solar system lineup because its smaller orbit does not carry it much above the horizon.
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- It’s amazing that we live in an era where we can now discuss topics like the ‘planetary geology’ of Mercury. Thanks to spacecraft like BepiColombo, these enigmatic worlds that have remained mere points of light for centuries have now become dynamic and exciting worlds in their own right.
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- We have a lot more to learn. Maybe my grandchildren will read this? And, tell more of the story.
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June 26, 2022 3613
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