Welcome to Space! BepiColombo Spacecraft Headed to Mercury Snap 1st Photo

Welcome to Space! BepiColombo Spacecraft Headed to Mercury Snap 1st Photo

Welcome to Space! BepiColombo Spacecraft Headed to Mercury Snap 1st Photo







		A mission recently launched to Mercury has transmitted home its first photo from space.

		The European-Japanese BepiColombo Mission captured a selfie that shows an extended solar array and a solar sensor wrapped in insulation on Saturday (October 20), a day after taking off from Kourou, French Guiana.

		The heart of BepiColombo are two spacecraft: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) of the European Space Agency and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), which was provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. A third component, the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), serves to support this duo during the long cruise to the innermost planet of the solar system.

The[[BepiColombo in images: a mercury mission in Europe and Japan]

		And this cruise will be really long. BepiColombo is scheduled to enter orbit around Mercury in December 2025, after nine different planetary overflights: one from Earth, two from Venus and six from Mercury. This complicated trajectory is a consequence of Mercury's high orbital velocity and proximity to the sun; Mercury-bound spacecraft you have to thread a needle to reach the planet and avoid being absorbed by the powerful gravity of our star.

		Once on Mercury, the two orbiters will separate and follow their own paths. The various data collected by the duo will paint a complete image of the rocky planet, shedding light on its composition, structure, magnetic field, formation and evolution, among other characteristics, mission officials have said. 





						


This diagram shows the spacecraft comprising the BepiColombo Mercury mission, as well as the location of the surveillance camera that took the first photo of the mission: the selfie seen on the left, which was captured on October 20, 2018, one day after the launch of the mission. .

            						    Credit: ESA / BepiColombo / MTM - CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO 


		The first historical photo was taken by one of the three black and white monitoring cameras aboard the MTM. If everything goes according to plan, the other two cameras will be activated on Sunday (October 21) and will take images of the deployed MPO antennas of medium and high gain, said ESA officials.

		"The monitoring cameras will be used several times during the cruise phase, especially during the overflights of Earth, Venus and Mercury," ESA officials wrote in an interview. Description of the newly published photo.. 

		"While the MPO is equipped with a high resolution scientific camera, this can only be operated after separating from the MTM when it reaches Mercury at the end of 2025 because, like several of the 11 instrument suites, it is on the side. of the spacecraft, fixed to the MTM during the cruise, "they added.



	Mike Wall's book on the search for extraterrestrial life. "Out there" will be published on November 13 by Grand Central Publishing. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom or Facebook. Originally published in Space.com.

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