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Solar Orbiter, a partnership between ESA and NASA, will fly over Venus on Monday. Closer point, the spacecraft will be 7,995 kilometers (4,968 miles) from the surface of the planet.
On Tuesday, BepiColombo, a company between ESA and the Japanese space agency JAXA, will fly much closer – at an altitude of just 550 kilometers (341 miles).
However, Venus is not the final destination of the two spaceships.
Swinging close to the planet allows the two spacecraft to obtain what is called “gravitational assistance”. While sometimes used to catapult a spacecraft further into space, in this case the maneuver will be used to lose orbital energy and slow down to avoid overtaking. their destinations at the center of the solar system, ESA said.
The goal of Solar Orbiter is to take the very first images of the solar poles – something ESA says is crucial to understanding how the sun works and how we can predict space weather. After this first overview, Solar Orbiter will return to the vicinity of Venus during its mission and will use the planet’s gravity to modify or tilt its orbit in order to eventually reach the correct orbital angle to photograph the sun’s poles.
Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is the destination of the BepiColombo mission. It must use the gravitational pull of Venus to move towards the orbit of Mercury and counter the immense gravitational pull of the sun, according to ESA.
ESA said black-and-white images of the overflights taken by two of BepiColombo’s three surveillance cameras will be batch uploaded and made public on August 10 and 11.
High-resolution images will not be available, ESA added, because Solar Orbiter’s science camera must remain facing the sun, and BepiColombo’s main camera is protected by the transfer module which will deliver two planetary orbiters to Mercury.
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