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"Bepicolombo" begins at Mercury Esa launches the most complicated mission in its history
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ESA mission on mission to Mercury
The probe "BepiColombo" of ESA begins its mission on the planet Mercury. The preparations took almost twenty years and cost nearly 1.3 billion euros. In 2025 she reached her destination.
Mercury receives a visit from humanity: the probe "BepiColombo" begins in the night towards the planet closest to the sun. The preparations took almost 20 years. The reason is "the infernal environment".
reMost Germans will probably have slept too much at the beginning of "BepiColombo". Saturday morning at 15:45, German time, for the launch of the first Euro-Japanese research mission on the sunniest planet Mercury. The joint project of the European Space Agency Esa and the Japan Space Agency Jaxa aims to penetrate deeper than ever into the secrets of Mercury.
"BepiColombo" will be launched in space with an Ariane 5 launcher from the European spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana. Until now, only two missions from the US NASA space agency have reached Mercury – "Mariner 10" in the 1970s and the "Messenger" spacecraft, which flew over the 2011 Mercury until the end of the century. to the exhaustion of its fuel supply in April 2015.
The mission "BepiColombo" is now to explore the peculiarities of the internal structure of Mercury and its magnetic field and, inter alia, to examine the issue of the presence of ice in the craters exposed to the sun. The European-American mission was named in honor of the Italian scientist Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, who played a decisive role in the success of the Merkur "Mariner 10" mission.
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Mercury forms with Venus, Earth and Mars the four rocky planets of the inner solar system. The journey to the planet, located only 58 million kilometers from the Sun, is considered the most complex space mission of Esa for more than 40 years.
The preparations for the mission of around 1.3 billion euros lasted almost 20 years. The reason is also the inhospitable conditions near the Mercury: to allow the probe to survive, according to the terms of "hellish environment" of Esa, it was necessary to develop a number of new technologies .
Mercury's approach will take a little over seven years – until 2025, "BepiColombo" will reach the deepest of the inner planets.
The trip is complicated by the proximity of Mercury to the sun, according to the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS). Given the enormous gravity of the sun, it takes a lot of energy to slow down the probe so that it can tip into orbit around the innermost planet.
Comparison of sizes: here is a woman working on the space probe "BepiColombo"
Source: dpa
The 6.40-meter tall, 4.1-tonne satellite approaches its destination on large elliptical orbits. It flies over the planets nine times, among other things to slow down and not fall in the sun. The Earth is first in 2020, then twice Venus and Mercury six times.
"BepiColombo" consists of two separate orbits, Mercury Planetary Orbiter from Esa and Merck Magnetospheric Orbiter from Jaxa.
Mercury is a world of extremes: according to MPS, it has huge impact ponds, steep slopes up to three kilometers high, probably due to the shrinking of the planet, as well as areas created by volcanoes. In addition, there are maximum temperatures of 470 degrees Celsius, a low overall magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere called exosphere.
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"BepiColombo's should help us understand how Mercury has evolved since its inception – and why it's been so different from Earth's," said Ulrich Christensen, director of MPS. An enigma, for example, yields the magnetic field of Mercury.
The Earth's magnetic field is created in its hot and liquid iron core. Mercury even has a particularly large iron core compared to its small diameter. Therefore, according to MPS, it is difficult to understand why the magnetic field on the surface of the planet is a hundred times weaker than that of the Earth.
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