ESA spacecraft shares first photo of Mercury during fly-by – IT Pro – News

And that flyby is necessary because the speed is now much too high to enter Mercury orbit. BepiColombo now flies around at a speed of about 50 km/second. This must decrease to less than 4.25 km/second, only then will it be possible to enter orbit around Mercury.

This BepiColombo mission is a follow-up to the previous MESSENGERNASA mission that conducted research on Mercury between 2008 and 2015. Questions arose as a result of that mission, and BepiColombo will try to answer those questions.

By the way, the name BepiColombo comes from the Italian Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo. This guy has the gravity-assist maneuver (also called fly-by) largely worked out, and then specifically for an orbit around Mercury..

His elaborate technique was first applied in the Mariner 10NASA mission, with a fly-by of Venus, in February 1974.

[Reactie gewijzigd door wildhagen op 4 oktober 2021 13:32]

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