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Science
Due on November 21, eleven months late - but on time to do science!
Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has offered a definitive date for the BepiColombo mission’s arrival at Mercury.
BepiColombo is a joint effort between JAXA and the European Space Agency. The mission involves three craft: A vehicle called the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM), which carries the ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).
The MTM’s primary role is getting the two orbiters to Mercury, but mission boffins have used its cameras to snap images of Earth, Venus and Mercury in the seven-and-a-half years since its October 2018 launch.
The mission plan called for the MTM to swing around the Earth once and Venus twice, plus six loops around Mercury. A thruster glitch saw mission planners revise that itinerary and meant the probe would arrive in orbit at Mercury in November 2026 – eleven months later than first planned.
In a Monday Xeet from a JAXA X account dedicated to the MMO, the Japanese space agency revealed the exact date BepiColombo will arrive: November 21.
“We'll gently be captured by Mercury's gravity and enter orbit,” the Xeet states, before adding that Japan’s orbiter will detach from the MTM on December 10.
Mission plans assume another few weeks will pass before either orbiter gets down to work.
BepiColombo is humanity’s third mission to Mercury, following 1973’s Mariner 10 and 2004’s Messenger. The MMO and MPO carry instruments that, it’s hoped, will help to enhance our understanding of Mercury’s interior and magnetosphere.
We currently know very little about Mercury because it is so close to the Sun that spacecraft must avoid being trapped by the massive gravity of Earth’s nearest star, which makes navigation and ongoing operations complicated. Once spacecraft do reach Mercury, temperatures are fierce even hundreds of kilometres above the planet’s surface. The ESA has used the example of a laptop that can work inside a pizza oven to illustrate the difficulties its probe will face and loaded its MPO with radiators and 94kg of insulation to protect its instruments.
The planet, our solar system’s smallest and most dense, also defies observation from telescopes because the Sun shines so brightly it can damage sensitive optics.
BepiColombo’s imminent arrival therefore brings hope that humanity can learn more about a planet that, thanks to its speedy orbit, is often closer to Earth than any other. ®
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