Europe and Japan send a spacecraft on a 7-year trip to Mercury
Europe and Japan send a spacecraft on a 7-year trip to Mercury
European and JapanThese space agencies said an Ariane 5 rocket successfully lifted a spacecraft carrying two probes in orbit on Saturday for a joint mission to Mercury, the planet closest to the sun.
The European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the unmanned BepiColombo ship was successfully separated and sent to orbit from French Guiana as scheduled to begin a seven-year trip to Mercury.
They said that the spacecraft, named after the Italian scientist Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo, was in the right orbit and sent the first signal after takeoff.
The ESA says that the 1,300 million euro (1,500 million dollars) mission is one of the most challenging in its history. The extreme temperatures of Mercury, the intense gravity of the sun and the scorching solar radiation create hellish conditions.
The BepiColombo spacecraft will have to follow an elliptical path that involves an overflight of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury so that it can slow down before reaching its destination in December 2025.
When it arrives, BepiColombo will launch two probes, Bepi and Mio, that will independently investigate the surface and magnetic field of Mercury. The probes are designed to cope with temperatures ranging from 430 degrees Celsius (806 F) on the sun-facing side and -180 degrees Celsius (-292 F) in the shadow of Mercury.
The Bepi developed by the ESA will operate in the internal orbit of Mercury, and the Mio of JAXA will be in the external orbit to collect data that reveal the internal structure of the planet, its surface and its geological evolution.
The scientists hope to take advantage of the knowledge acquired by NASA's Messenger probe, which ended its mission in 2015 after a four-year Mercury orbit. The only other spacecraft that visited Mercury was the NASA Mariner 10 that flew over the planet in the mid-1970s.
Mercury, which is only slightly larger than Earth's moon, has a massive iron core of which little is known. The researchers also hope to learn more about the formation of the solar system from the data collected by the BepiColombo mission.
"Beyond completing the challenging journey, this mission will return a great deal of science," said Jan Wörner, ESA's Director General, in a statement.
JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa, who led the project earlier, said: "We have high expectations that Mercury's detailed observations will help us better understand the planet's environment and, ultimately, the origin of the Solar System, including the one on Earth. "
It is the second recent cooperation between Europeans and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The JAXA Hayabusa2 probe dropped a German-French rover on the asteroid Ryugu earlier this month.
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Jordans reported from Berlin.
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