Roman probe shot in the night – to solve the mystery of Merkur – NRK Urix – Foreign News and Documentaries

– It's spectacular. Today, we have written the story, said the European Space Agency's scientific director, Günther Hasinger, following the rocket firing carrying both probes from French Guyana.

The space with the two spacecraft was named BepiColombo, named after an Italian researcher. Bepi Colombo was the first to describe a special maneuver in space that could either give the spacecraft extra speed or slow it down.

The maneuver is performed when a spaceship meets planets.

In place in seven years

BepiColombo will undertake a series of such maneuvers near the Earth, Venus and Merkur.

It will therefore yield more than eight billion kilometers. This means that the probes will take place around Merkur in seven years, especially on December 25, 2025.

Suzanne Imber, one of the astronauts at the origin of the project, explains that the reason for the trip will be so long, is that the probe is pulled by the gravity of the sun and that she will reach a speed too high if it does not slow down.

"Therefore, it must be sent in several corridors around the sun before reaching the right speed, so that it can be caught by the low gravity of Merkur," she said in a statement. interview with the BBC.

– extreme temperatures

This is not the first time people have been sending Merkur space underneath. But what is unique this time is that the two spacecraft constituting BepiColombo are endowed with a considerably more scientific material than their predecessors.

The European Space Agency (CESA) describes the set of equipment embedded on the satellite as "the most advanced ever sent into space".

But the biggest challenge is that Merkur is so close to the sun and exposed to extreme amounts of energy, says Imber.

– The equipment must survive very high temperatures. Mercury has a daytime temperature of around 450 degrees Celsius and minus 150 degrees at night.

Norwegian technology

Kongsberg Defense & Aerospace has created the mechanism and electronics for controlling solar panels right down to the heart of BebiColombo.

The Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) will transport the Merkur spacecraft, writes the Norwegian Space Center.

They had already supplied equipment similar to other European space brands, such as Mars Express, Venus Express and Rosetta.

Well before Merkur, the two space probes will separate the teams and take different paths around the planet.

One will collect satellite images of the planet's surface, while the other will examine the magnetosphere (area around planets and celestial bodies with an internal magnetic field, journ.anm.).

"The most important goal is to understand how the planet was formed and how it evolved," says Imber.