CALIFORNIA, iNews.id – Venus will be in the spotlight this week. The planet will play host to two different spacecraft doing cross-flying to get a gravitational boost on their way to another destination.
The first visitors, which will make their closest approach to Venus on August 9, will be NASA’s Solar Orbiter and ESA. This craft is designed to study the Sun, as quoted from Digital Trends.
But, to reach the Sun, this orbiter performs repeated interstellar flights of Venus to bring it closer to the heart of the Solar System. The second visitor, arriving a day later on August 10, was ESA’s BepiColombo and JAXA studying Mercury.
BepiColombo has passed Venus before and will fly over the second Venus to ignite it to its final destination. Unfortunately, no spacecraft can take high-resolution images of Venus because the Solar Orbiter must remain facing the Sun and BepiColombo will be blocked by its transfer module.
Editor: Dini Listiyani
