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The Mysteries Of Mercury
Credit: ESA/Euronews
BepiColombo will provide the best understanding of Mercury to date. It consists of two individual orbiters: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) to map the planet, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) to investigate its magnetosphere.
Most of ESA’s previous interplanetary missions have been to relatively cold parts of the Solar System. BepiColombo will be the Agency’s first experience of sending a planetary probe close to the Sun.
BepiColombo’s mission is especially challenging because Mercury’s orbit is so close to our star. The planet is hard to observe from a distance, because the Sun is so bright. Furthermore, it is difficult to reach because a spacecraft must lose a lot of energy to ‘fall’ towards the planet from the Earth. The Sun’s enormous gravity presents a challenge in placing a spacecraft into a stable orbit around Mercury.
Only NASA’s Mariner 10 and Messenger have visited Mercury so far. Mariner 10 provided the first-ever close-up images of the planet when it flew past three times in 1974-1975. En route to its final destination in orbit around Mercury in 18 March 2011, Messenger flew past the planet 3 times (14 January 2008, 6 October 2008, and 29 September 2009), providing new data and images. Once BepiColombo arrives in 2022, it will help reveal information on the composition and history of Mercury. It should discover more about the formation and the history of the inner planets in general, including Earth.
BepiColombo will help reveal information on the composition and history of Mercury, and the history and formation of the inner planets in general, including Earth.
This artist’s impression provides a view of the two BepiColombo spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), in their elliptical polar orbits around Mercury.
The MPO will circle the planet along an orbit ranging between 400 and 1500 kilometres above the surface. The MMO orbit ranges between 400 and 12 000 kilometres above the surface. The inclination and the eccentricity of these orbits are optimised for the study of the planet and of its magnetosphere in the very high temperature environment around Mercury.
The MPO will circle the planet along an orbit ranging between 400 and 1500 kilometres distance from the surface. The MMO orbit ranges between 400 and 12000 kilometres from the surface. The inclination and the eccentricity of these orbits are optimised for the study of the planet and of its magnetosphere in the very-high-temperature environment around Mercury.
Credits: ESA – image by C.Carreau
Contacts and sources:
ESA
