BepiColombo: Joint Mission to Mercury
BepiColombo: Joint Mission to Mercury
BepiColombo is a planned European-Japanese mission to Mercury. It is scheduled to launch in 2018. The mission includes a spacecraft called the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which supplies electrical power during an interplanetary cruise, and two separate orbiters. The spacecraft of the European Space Agency is the Mercury Planet Orbiter (MPO) and the spacecraft of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency is the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
The ship will take about seven years to reach Mercury, using several gravity aids from other planets along the way. It will fly through Earth and Venus in 2020, Venus in 2021 and Mercury between 2021 and 2025. These overflights will make the ship reach enough speed to be captured by Mercury's gravity in December 2025.
Japan's MMO will be idle during the interplanetary cruise, with occasional starts to make sure the ship is functioning properly. The European MPO will communicate with the Earth and will also command the Japanese spacecraft and the MTM until the three components are separated.
The MTM will separate from the orbiters just before Mercury's orbit is reached. Then, the two spacecraft will be placed in separate orbits to perform scientific investigations of Mercury. Japan's MMO will have an orbit of 9.3 hours, and Europe's MPO will have an orbit of about 2.3 hours. The mission is expected to last a terrestrial year, which is the equivalent of four years of Mercury. It can be extended for an additional terrestrial year if funding permits, and the two ships remain in good health.
History of BepiColombo.
The first European proposal for a Mercury mission came in 1993, according to the European Space Agency (ESA). The agency included a mercury orbiter as one of the three possible new "cornerstone" missions as part of the Horizon 2000 science program, which also gave birth to Cassini Orbiter who visited Saturn and its moons, as well as the Huygens landing module that accompanies Titan.
BepiColombo and another mission called Gaia, to create a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way, were approved in 2000. ESA then issued a request for proposal for the payload of BepiColombo MPO in 2004. The payload is the part of the spacecraft which performs the main functions of the mission, including scientific research. The payload instruments were selected that same year.
In 2007, Astrium GmbH was selected as the main contractor for BepiColombo. Originally, the Mercury spacecraft was supposed to fly in a Soyuz-Fregat, but it was changed to a heavier Ariane 5 rocket after the mission's mass was increased during the design phase in 2008. The science program committee of ESA gave final approval for the redesigned BepiColombo mission in November 2009.
The[[Related: New European mercury test passes oven test]
The release date has been delayed several times. A July 2014 target was delayed until August 2015 after Astrium observed the development of several components of the spacecraft (such as solar panels and the electric propulsion system) and determined that they could not meet the previous deadline. Subsequent delays in different parts of the mission's development delayed the launch date in 2016, 2017 and then in 2018.
The launch date of BepiColombo in April 2018 was delayed six months until October 2018 after a major electrical problem was discovered during an MTM test. When The announcement was made at the end of 2016.ESA said it did not predict any impact on the scientific return of the mission.
BepiColombo Science
ESA noted that going to Mercury would help scientists not only understand how the planet was formed, but also provide more general information about the formation of the solar system. The objectives (in the words of the ESA) include:
Investigate the origin and evolution of a planet close to the parent star.
Study Mercury as a planet: its shape, interior structure, geology, composition and craters.
Examine the vestigial atmosphere of Mercury (exosphere): its composition and dynamics.
Magnetized surround probe of Mercury (magnetosphere): its structure and dynamics
Determine the origin of Mercury's magnetic field.
Investigate polar deposits: their composition and origin.
Take a test Theory of general relativity of Einstein.
The European MPO will carry the following instruments:
BELA - BepiColombo Laser Altimeter
ISA - Italian spring accelerometer
MPO-MAG - Magnetic field research
MERTIS - Mercury radiometer and thermal imaging spectrometer
MGNS - Mercury gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer
MIXES - Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer
MORE - Mercury Orbiter Radio science Experiment
PHEBUS - Survey of the Hermean exosphere by ultraviolet spectroscopy
SERENA - Exosphere Search Recharge and Emitted Neutral Abundance (neutral and ionized particle analyzer)
SIMBIO-SYS - Spectrometers and images for the MPO BepiColombo integrated observatory - HRIC, STC, VIHI
SIXS - X-ray spectrometer and solar intensity particles
Japan's MMO will carry the following instruments:
MERMAG-M / MGF - Mercury Magnetometer
MPPE - Mercury plasma particle experiment
PWI - Mercury plasma wave instrument
MSASI - Atmospheric spectral image of sodium mercury
MDM - Mercury dust monitor
Past missions to mercury
In the early days of the space age, scientists were trying to discover the most efficient way to take pictures of Mercury. Although the planet sometimes approaches 48 million miles (77 million kilometers) from Earth, approximately one third of the distance between Earth and Mars, it takes an extraordinary amount of energy to slow down a spacecraft to enter the Earth. orbit of Mercury. ESA said.
Studies from the 1950s and 1960s suggested that a spacecraft could use Venus gravity to launch a sling at Mercury, and thus reach the planet without the need to use much rocket fuel. Opportunities to take advantage of this catapult would arise in 1970 and 1973, according to a research of the early sixties of Michael Minovich, a graduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles.
This is where the namesake of BepiColombo comes in. Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo was then a researcher of celestial mechanics at the University of Padua in Italy. It showed that after a spacecraft made a flyby by Mercury, it would enter a 176-day orbit around the sun. Fortunately, this is exactly twice the Mercury year of 88 days, which makes it easier for the ship to return to Mercury repeatedly with only minor orbital modifications. "The only drawback was that the lighting conditions on the surface would be the same for each encounter," ESA wrote.
This was the plan that followed the first mission of Mercury. Called Mariner 10, the mission of NASA was launched on November 3, 1973. In February, the mission was taken by Venus and achieved its first closest approach to Mercury on March 29, 1974. Although the spacecraft approached at night, the images were sent back showing the hemisphere illuminated by the sun while the spaceship was moving away.
Other encounters occurred on September 21, 1974 and March 16, 1975. The highlight of the Mariner 10 mission included discovering a magnetic field similar to Earth's and studying the planet's magnetic field and the effects of Earth. solar wind (The constant flow of charged particles that come from the sun.)
"It was seen that the surface was subdivided into interspersed plains, smooth plains and terrains with many craters that resembled the landscapes of the Earth's moon." The most remarkable individual feature, partially visible in the terminator of the sunrise, was a giant impact basin that was called Caloris, "ESA wrote. "Other striking features were the steep cliffs, hundreds of kilometers long, that seemed to have been formed by global compression, possibly due to the contraction of the planet as it cooled."
Mariner 10 remained the only spacecraft that visited Mercury for a generation, until the DELIVERY COURIER (The MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry, and Ranging mission was launched on August 3, 2004). He arrived at Mercury after several gravity assists of Mercury, Venus and Earth. The spacecraft made three overflights in January 2008, October 2008 and September 2009, before orbiting Mercury between March 2011 and April 2015, when it ran out of gas and crashed into the planet.
Some of MESSENGER's major discoveries include evidence of water ice in permanently shaded craters at the planet's poles, depressions called "holes" that are only known to exist on Mercury, and extensive volcanic activity on the entire planet.
Additional resources
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq('init', '369524843414444');
fbq('track', 'PageView');
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",function(){if(document.getElementById("comments")){var listener=function(){var rect=document.getElementById("comments").getBoundingClientRect();if(rect.top<window.innerHeight){loadAPI();window.removeEventListener("scroll",listener)}};window.addEventListener("scroll",listener)}});function loadAPI(){var js=document.createElement("script");js.src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&appId=131734303545872&version=v2.4";document.body.appendChild(js)}
var Purch=Purch||{};Purch.queue=Purch.queue||[];Purch.queue.push([["jquery","Purch/UI/Poll"],function($,Poll){$("[data-poll]").each(function(){var e=this;var oconf=$(this).data("poll")?$(this).data("poll"):{};oconf["element"]=e;var poll=new Poll(oconf)})}]);
.
SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario