Two spacecraft made historic flights to Venus last week, both sending back sci-fi views of the mysterious cloud-covered planet.
Solar Orbiter and the BepiColombo spacecraft each used Venus in gravity within 33 hours of each other, capturing unique images and data during their encounters.
Solar Orbiter, a joint European Space Agency and NASA mission to study the Sun, sailed past Venus on August 9 at a distance of 7,995 kilometers (4,967 miles). Then BepiColombo, a collaborative project between ESA and JAXA, blasted off to Mercury, just 552 km (343 miles) from the planet’s surface on August 10.
The image above was taken when BepiColumbo was 1,573 km from Venus.
Here is a video of the Solar Orbiter demonstration, from photographer SoloHI:
The camera sees the night side of Venus in the days before its closest approach. SoloHI will be used to capture images of the solar wind – a continuous stream of charged particles ejected from the sun – by capturing light scattered by electrons by the wind. In the days before the Venus flyby, telescopes caught sight of the planet’s bright light. The footage shows Venus moving across the field of view from the left, while the Sun is away from the camera at the top right. Scientists from the European Space Agency explained that the planet’s night side, the hidden part of the sun, appears as a dark semi-circle surrounded by a bright crescent moon.
Both planes help the spacecraft reach its next destination. BepiColombo is slated to reach the solar system’s innermost planet in October 2025. The spacecraft will need Earth and Venus flybys and then several flights on Mercury itself, along with the spacecraft’s solar electric propulsion system, to help guide it into Mercury’s orbit against the colossal one. attracts the sun’s gravity.
BepiColombo actually consists of two connected orbits: the Planetary Mercury Orbiter and the Magnetospheric Orbiter Mercury. The planetary probe will map the planet in great detail, and the planetary probe, of course, will study its magnetosphere.
This BepiColombo Venus flyby video includes the sonication of data recorded by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter spacecraft. The accelerometer data is converted into a frequency that can be heard by the human ear. The sound produced is very interesting, because it reflects the differences in the acceleration of the spacecraft due to the effects of planetary gravity on the structure of the spacecraft, as well as the effects of rapid changes in temperature, and changes in the speed of the reaction wheels as they move. work hard to compensate for this effect. The sound is matched to the shooting time seen in this film, at moments that follow the closest approach.
The Solar Orbiter will make a near-Earth flight on November 27 this year, 460 kilometers (285 miles) before another Venus catapult tilts its head, helping the spacecraft get in the correct position to get a first view of the craft. The solar pole, an important part of the mission to help us understand the 11-year cycle of solar activity. Initial missions also began in November. It will take an image of the closest-ever Sun within 42 million km, and measure the composition of the solar wind.
You can read more details about the two flybys on the ESA website.
BepiColombo mission website.
Solar Orbiter Mission website.
