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A British-built spacecraft is expected to take off from Earth for Mercury, the mysterious planet closest to the sun.
BepiColombo, one of the most ambitious missions ever undertaken by the European Space Agency (ESA), will send two orbiters to explore the hellish world where surface temperatures reach 450 ° C.
A probe was built by satellite manufacturers Airbus Space and Defense at its Stevenage assembly center in Herts. The other was built in Japan.
Infographic showing the different components of BepiColombo (Airbus Defense and Space / PA)
The mission, launched Oct. 20, cost about 1.6 billion euros (1.4 billion pounds sterling).
Unlike all other interplanetary spaceships in history, BepiColombo is equipped with a futuristic ion electric propulsion, also designed and built in the UK.
Test of ignition of one of BepiColombio's T6 ionic thrusters (Nasa / JPL / PA)
Four ionic engines of the mercury transfer module (MTM) carrying the orbiters will provide thrust by electrically ejecting a charged xenon gas "plasma".
Although the force produced by an ion engine is very small, much less than that of a chemical rocket, it can stay on for a long time.
Mission controllers prepare for the launch of BepiColombo at the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany (Esa / PA)
The four-ton spacecraft will be launched into an "escape trajectory" orbit by Esa's most powerful rocket, Ariane 5, from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana.
He will then undertake a seven-year, 8.5-billion-kilometer (5.2-billion-kilometer) journey that includes a complex series of gravitational overflights around the Earth, Venus, and Mercury.
Mercury image taken by the NASA Spacecraft Messenger (NASA / Johns Hopkins University / Carnegie Institution of Applied Physics Laboratory, Washington / PA)
Turning to the sun, BepiColombo will use its ion training and flyovers not to accelerate, but to curb and overcome the star's powerful gravity.
After playing six times with Mercury crossing the orbital trajectory of the planet, the spacecraft will arrive at its destination in 2025.
Mercury Planet Orbiter (DFO) from ESA and Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) from Japanese space agency Jaxa will then split up to study the little known world of the sunny world for up to two years.
DFO will produce global maps of surface chemistry and geological features of Mercury, while MMO will study the internal structure and magnetic field of the planet.
One of DFO's key instruments, the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (Mixs), was designed and built at the University of Leicester.
Only two spacecraft have visited Mercury. The NASA Mariner 10 flew over the planet three times in 1974-1975 and the US Space Agency's Messenger probe orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, taking pictures of the surface.
Jerry Bolter, Project Manager at Airbus Defense and Space, said: "The only other spacecraft to orbit Mercury was the NASA messenger. It was a very, very light spacecraft as far as Bepi. Scientists describe Messenger as hors d'oeuvre and Bepi as the main course. "
Describing the ion transmission of the spacecraft, provided by the British defense technology company QinetiQ and installed at Airbus, he said: "If we rely on chemical propulsion, we would need 17 tons of propellant.
"The ion reader only needs 581 kilograms of propellant and represents the equivalent of 17.8 million miles per gallon."
Two ion engines operate at the same time, producing a maximum thrust of 290 thousandths of an inch – the equivalent of about one ounce of force. They will actively shoot for four and a half years, more than half of the total journey time.
Dr. Bolter added, "I have been working on this project since 2006. It will be very emotional, I think. This is a fundamental step for the launch of the Space Shuttle. Then you start to worry: will we have a communication? Will we have power? But it's also exciting. "
A key challenge for mission scientists was to deal with temperatures of over 350 ° C.
In Greek mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun and paid the ultimate price. Similarly, BepiColumbo's orbiters could be destroyed without adequate protection.
The measures used included a heat shield, several layers of new ceramic and titanium insulators, and ammonia-filled "heat pipes" that conduct heat to a radiator face that is always directed toward the sun.
Only the MMO will turn to reduce overheating on a surface.
"We have an environment in the spacecraft in which electronics can operate at a normal temperature," Dr. Bolter said.
Professor Emma Bunce, a scientist at Mixs, said, "We still do not understand some of the interesting quirks about Mercury. Messenger told us a lot, but also raised more questions.
"It's extremely exciting but also a bit terrifying."
BepiColombo is named after the late Guiseppe "Bepi" Colombo, an Italian scientist and engineer from the University of Padua, who played a leading role in Mercury's Mariner 10 mission in 1974.
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