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An unmanned European-Japanese space mission, BepiColombo, took flight today in French Guiana.
Is the heart of Mercury the liquid or the solid, and why – on the smallest planet in our solar system – is it so big? What can the closest planet to the Sun teach us about the creation of our solar system?
An unmanned European-Japanese space mission, named BepiColombo, was launched early Saturday morning in French Guiana to probe these mysteries. 19659004] "BepiColombo arrives as a white knight with better and more accurate data," said Alain Doressoundiram, astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris.
"To understand how the Earth was formed, we must understand how all the rock planets were formed," He includes Venus and Mars, he told AFP.
"Mercury stands out and we do not know why."
However, the suite of instruments aboard the Ariane 5 rocket will have to travel seven years later. 9 million kilometers before reaching their destination.
In a statement issued after the launch, ArianeGroup said the satellite had managed to escape the gravity field of the Earth and began its long journey where it would reach speeds of up to 40,000 kilometers. (25 000 miles) time
According to Pierre Bousquet, engineer at the French National Space Research Center and head of the French team involved in the mission, Mercury is "abnormally small", which suggests that he would have survived a mbadive disaster. collision in his youth.
"A huge crater visible on its surface could be the scar left by this encounter," Bousquet told AFP. To know if this is true, this is part of BepiColombo's list of things to do.
Hot and Cold
This scenario would explain why the core of Mercury represents 55% of its mbad, against 30% for Earth.
Mercury is also the only rocky planet in orbit around the Sun to have a magnetic field.
Magnetic fields are generated by a liquid core but, given its size, it should have become cold and solid now, just like Mars.
This anomaly could be due to a characteristic of the composition of the nucleus, something that BepiColombo's instruments will measure with a much greater precision than has been possible up to now.
On its surface, Mercury is a planet of extremes, wavering between warm days of about 430 degrees Celsius (over 800 degrees Fahrenheit) and extremely cold nights of minus 180 degrees C (minus 290F). ).
These days and nights last nearly three months each Earth
Previous missions have detected ice-proof in the deepest recesses of the polar craters of the planet.
Scientists badume that this could have accumulated as a result of comets falling on the surface of Mercury.
"If the presence of ice is confirmed, it means that some of these water samples are from almost the origin of the solar system," Doressoundiram said.
Struck by the solar winds
Mercury is 58 million kilometers from the Sun, almost three times closer than the Earth.
"The planet is badped by solar winds," Bousquet said, "A steady stream of ionized particles are bombarding the surface at 500 km / s.
Scientists will be able to study the impact of these winds – ten times more powerful than those that hit Earth's atmosphere – on the magnetic field of Mercury
The BepiColombo mission will deploy two spacecraft The Mercury Planet Orbiter, built by ESA, will study the composition from the surface and from the inside of the planet
The Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, manufactured by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will study the region of space around the planet influenced by its magnetic field. 19659004] The mission will also search for tectonic activity and seek to understand why spectroscopic observations show no iron, even if it is supposed to be one of the main components of the planet. [19] 659004] Compared to Mars, Venus and Saturn, Mercury has barely been explored.
The NASA Mariner 10 made three overflights in 1974 and 1975, providing the first images up close. More than 30 years later, the NASA messenger did the same, before settling in orbit around Mercury in 2011.
The new mission is named after Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo, brilliant mathematician and Italian engineer who first understood the relationship between the Mercury rotation. and orbit.
(With the exception of the title, this story has not been altered by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated thread.)
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