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A mission to Mercury, one of our solar system's most studied planets, is about to embark on its seven-year journey.
Experts say BepiColombo could not only shed light on the mysteries of our neighborhood's small planet, but also provide vitality – so-called exoplanets – could be livable .
"If we want to understand our earth and how can life [begin] "Joe Zender, deputy project scientist for BepiColombo. But while much progress has been made in the matter, Zender says there is a snag. "There is one problem really, which is Mercury – Mercury does not fit."
Among the puzzles is the surprisingly high density of mercury and it is thought to be at least partly molten.
And with some exoplanets orbiting our own, finding out more about the first rock from our sun has become a dry matter.
Due to launch from Kourou, French Guiana, the BepiColombo mission is a € 1.6bn (£ 1.4bn) joint venture between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese space agency, Jaxa.
While the mission has a hefty price tag, it could be argued that it is something of a bargain, because BepiColombo does not just involve one orbiter, but two. Mercury by the ESA-built Mercury Transfer Module, the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, built by the Japanese, and the Mercury Planetary Orbiter, built by the Europeans.
BepiColombo graphic
Despite being just 58m from the sun, Mercury has rarely been in the spotlight.
Only two previous missions have examined the planet's properties – Nasa's Mariner 10 probe, launched in 1973, and the most recent Messenger mission, which launched in 2004. The latest endeavor takes its name from the late Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, a professor at the University of Padua who was a key figure in devising Mariner 10's Mercury fly-bys.
Both previous missions threw up intriguing results, including that Mercury has a magnetic field. This article presents a brief overview of its position in the field of rotation – it takes the view that it can not be used in the future. What's more, Mercury's magnetic field is offset by 20% of the planet's radius, meaning certain features at the south pole.
Mercury was also found to have an exosphere – a very thin layer above the surface composed of atoms and molecules that have come from the crust and solar wind.
But before BepiColombo can probe such phenomena, it must negotiate two major hurdles.
"The heat is really severe," said Dr. Suzanne Imber of the University of Leicester, who is a co-investigator on MIXS – one of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter's 11 instruments – and also worked on Messenger. "[Our spacecraft] are going to have a few minutes of …
The Japanese orbiter will spin 15 times a minute to avoid being roasted, like a kebab on a barbecue, while the European will be wrapped in a special multi-layer blanket and have a radiator for protection.
Getting to Mercury is also a head-scratcher.
"Mercury is a small body, so you can fly straight to Mercury and get there in a few months, but you can not stop because of the sun's gravity," said Imber.
The answer is to arrive slowly via an elegant series of laps, with the spacecraft swinging by Earth, Venus and Mercury before entering orbit around the closest planet to the sun in late 2025, then splitting and beginning operations in early 2026.
"We are passing once in the Earth, twice Venus and six times Mercury," said Zender. "We are going so close to the individual planets that we can use their gravitational forces to change our direction for the next step."
The team also examines the features of its internal structure, its chemical composition and its interaction with solar radiation.
Once in orbit around Mercury, the instruments will be set to work. An x-ray telescope, MIXS will help to shed light on the makeup of the planet.
"We are going to know in really incredible detail what the surface of Mercury is made of," said Imber, adding that the team can probe deeper down, too. "When you form an impact crater, what you find is that the layers of material from the surface are lifted by the impact and land on the surface," she said.
Prof. Nicolas Thomas, co-project manager of the Bela instrument aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter, said he wants to investigate the planet's curious surface features.
"A planet will shrink as it cools and Mercury has cooled a lot – we think the planet has cooled in such a way that it has reduced its history," he said. "There are so many great cliffs that we have not been able to do this."
It is a phenomenon Bela will help probe.
"What we do is that we take a very large, very scary powerful laser and we fire it up to about 1,000km away from the planet and then we wait for 6-10 milliseconds and we look at the reflected pulse," said Thomas. By looking at the time it has taken to the light to return, the team can calculate the contours of the surface below, essentially mapping Mercury.
While the BepiColombo mission is expected to last for two years or so in position around the Mercury, the team say it might continue for longer. Once over, the orbiters will be crashed into the planet's surface.
For now, though, the team is focused on the launch. "You've been 15 years of your life into one of these experiments," said Thomas. "And it's sitting there on top of a controlled explosion. So yeah, that's nerve-wracking. "
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