BepiColombo, the first European-Japanese space mission to Mercury, is approaching the small planet in time. To share such a fantastic experience, the probe has already sent several images of the rocky, crater-covered surface to Earth. Taken at an altitude of 199 kilometers on October 1 at night
The space vehicle, managed by the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, was launched in October 2018. Its objective is to unravel the mysteries that the planet closest to the Sun, but is not the warmest, treasures.
Mercury is the first planet in the Solar System. Unlike Earth, and it actually has many, its atmosphere is thin and it has no moon. You only enjoy one sunrise every 180 Earth days. And in its circumference temperatures of between 430 degrees and minus 180 degrees can be registered.
In this first close encounter with Mercury, images and scientific data were collected. “The flyby was perfect from the spacecraft’s point of view. It’s amazing to finally see our target planet, ”said Elsa Montagnon, Operations Manager at BepiColombo.
The images, in black and white, were acquired from about five minutes of the approach time and up to four hours later. While still 1,500 miles from Mercury, the spacecraft used its Mercury Transfer Module’s Monitoring camera. While diving in a close gravity-assisted flyby, the spacecraft reached the night side of the planet.
The region in the image is the northern hemisphere of Mercury, including the Sihtu Plain. Calvino crater and the Rudaki plains are also visible.
BepiColombo to the conquest of Mercury
The mission to Mercury was named BepiColombo, in homage to the Italian scientist Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo (1920-1984), a scholar of that planet and promoter of the current journey. After three years of travel, the spacecraft is today more than 100 million kilometers from Earth and flies over Mercury at about 198 kilometers high. It should be in orbit in 2025.
The vehicle consists of ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. Its purpose is to know more about Mercury. Its internal structure and the dynamics of its magnetosphere; likewise, its interaction with the solar wind and its large iron core. Above all, the origin of its magnetic field is one of the many questions.
José María Madiedo, doctor in Chemistry and Physics and researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia, pointed out to The country, that “more than telling us where we are going, it will tell us where we come from, the origin and evolution of the Solar System.”
Madiedo pointed out that “the mission will clarify questions for which today we do not have answers.” For example, how these planets are formed so close to their star, what their composition is, from what materials the solar system was formed and how it evolves, what is the composition of the thin Mercurian atmosphere and how are the exoplanets that are very close to his star ”.
Mercury has no equivalents to the ancient bright lunar highlands. Its surface is dark almost everywhere and was formed by vast lava effusions billions of years ago. These flows bear the scars of craters formed by asteroids and comets.
Knowing the little planet
The BepiColombo mission was launched in October 2018 bound for Mercury. Since then it has flown over Earth once and Venus twice. The next flybys will be around Mercury to adjust its planned orbit in December 2025. Once it does, a total of two scientific orbiters will be deployed in complementary orbits.
