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The BepiColombo mission will make its first overflight of Mercury around 7:34 p.m. ET on Friday and will pass within 200 kilometers of the planet’s surface. During the flyby, BepiColombo will collect scientific data and images and send them back to Earth.
The mission will actually place two probes in orbit around Mercury: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter led by ESA and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter led by JAXA, Mio. These orbiters will remain stacked in their current configuration with the Mercury transfer module until deployment in 2025.
Once the Bepicolombo spacecraft approaches Mercury to begin its orbit, the Mercury Transfer Module portion of the spacecraft will separate and the two orbiters will begin to circle the planet.
The two probes will spend a year collecting data to help scientists better understand this mysterious little planet, for example by further determining the processes that take place on its surface and magnetic field. This information could reveal the origin and evolution of the planet closest to the sun.
During Friday’s flyby, the spacecraft’s main camera will be shielded and unable to capture high-resolution images. But two of the spacecraft’s three surveillance cameras will take photos of the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres just after the close approach at about 621 miles (1,000 kilometers).
BepiColombo will be flying on the night side of the planet, so images during the closest approach could not show much detail.
The mission team predicts that the images will show large impact craters scattered across the surface of Mercury, much like our moon. Researchers can use the images to map the surface of Mercury and learn more about the makeup of the planet.
Some of the instruments from both orbiters will be turned on during the flyby so they can get a first puff of the magnetic field, plasma, and particles of Mercury.
The flyby comes at the right time on the occasion of the 101st anniversary of the birthday of Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, the Italian scientist and engineer who bears the name of the mission. Colombo’s work helped explain the rotation of Mercury in orbit around the sun and allowed NASA’s Mariner 10 spacecraft to perform three overflights of Mercury rather than one using gravitational assistance from Venus. He determined that the point where spacecraft fly over planets might actually help make future passages possible.
Mariner 10 was the first spacecraft sent to study Mercury, and it successfully completed its three overflights in 1974 and 1975. Then, NASA sent its Messenger spacecraft to conduct three overflights of Mercury in 2008 and 2009, and it put the planet into orbit from 2011 to 2015..
Now, BepiColombo will take on the task of providing scientists with the best information to unravel the mysteries of the planet as the second mission to orbit Mercury and the most complex to date.
“We are really looking forward to seeing the first results of measurements taken so close to the surface of Mercury,” Johannes Benkhoff, scientist from ESA’s BepiColombo project, said in a statement. “When I started working as a scientist on the BepiColombo project in January 2008, NASA’s Messenger mission made its first flyby over Mercury. Now it’s our turn. It’s a fantastic feeling!”
Why Mercury?
Little is known about the history, surface, or atmosphere of Mercury, which is notoriously difficult to study due to its proximity to the sun. It is the least explored of the four rocky planets in the inner solar system, including Venus, Earth and Mars. The brightness of the sun behind Mercury also makes the small planet difficult to observe from Earth.
BepiColombo will have to continuously ignite xenon gas from two of the four specially designed motors in order to constantly brake against the enormous gravitational force of the sun. Its distance from Earth also makes it difficult to reach – more energy is needed to allow BepiColombo to “fall” to the planet than it takes to send missions to Pluto.
A heat shield and titanium insulation have also been applied to the spacecraft to protect it from intense heat of up to 662 degrees Fahrenheit (350 degrees Celsius).
The two orbiters’ instruments will study the ice in the planet’s polar craters, why it has a magnetic field, and the nature of the “hollows” on the planet’s surface.
Mercury is full of mysteries for such a small planet, barely larger than our moon. What scientists do know is that during the day, temperatures can reach highs of 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius), but the planet’s thin atmosphere means it can dip as low as 290 degrees Fahrenheit ( negative 180 degrees Celsius) at night.
Even though Mercury is the closest planet to the sun about 58 million kilometers from our star on average, the hottest planet in our solar system is actually Venus because it has a dense atmosphere. But Mercury is certainly the fastest of the planets, orbiting the sun every 88 days – which is why it was named for the quick and winged messenger of the Roman gods.
If we could stand on the surface of Mercury, the sun would appear three times larger than on Earth and the sunlight would be blinding because it is seven times brighter.
Mercury’s unusual rotation and oval-shaped orbit around the sun means that our star appears to be rising, setting, and rising rapidly over parts of the planet, and a similar phenomenon occurs at sunset.
Rob Picheta contributed to this report.
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