The BepiColombo spacecraft is about to make its first Mercury flyby

3 years ago 329

By Will Gater

Artist?s content   of the BepiColombo spacecraft astatine  Mercury. The ngo  comprises ESA?s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (foreground) and JAXA?s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (background). The representation  of Mercury was taken by NASA?s Messenger spacecraft.

Artist’s content of the BepiColombo spacecraft astatine Mercury

Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mercury: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

The European and Japanese ngo BepiColombo volition marque a flyby of the star system’s inner-most satellite adjacent month, diving to conscionable 200 kilometres supra the aboveground of sun-scorched Mercury.

The spacecraft, which is specially engineered to withstand the precocious temperatures adjacent our star, volition cod information and images during the pass, making its closest attack to Mercury – known arsenic peri-herm – connected 1 October.

This volition beryllium “the archetypal of six flybys of Mercury aimed astatine reducing BepiColombo’s velocity,” says Elsa Montagnon …

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