A photo from open sources
Yesterday early morning Moscow time from French the Kourou spaceport successfully launched a space mission to comprehensive study of Mercury – BepiColombо. Note that in it not only European countries take part, including Russia, but also Japan is a joint project of the Japanese and European space agencies.
Mercury is a little-known planet of our solar system, with This is of great interest to scientists. But all the complexity lies in the fact that this planet is too close to The luminary, and therefore deliver a satellite to it in the usual way, like, let’s say to Mars, it won’t work.
A photo from open sources
As explained by the Space Research Officer of the Russian Academy of Sciences L. Xanfomality, any device launched to Mercury will pick up such the speed that it cannot be extinguished by any modern technique. And therefore, in today’s case, the original the decision of the Italian scientist Giuseppe Colombo (in honor of him and named mission – BepiColombо), which back in the last century proposed use gravitational rocket maneuvers near internal planets.
Thanks to such maneuvers, the BepiColombо apparatus, consisting of two orbiters (planetary and magnetospheric) and the carrier module, one and a half years will go out of the orbit of the Earth, then it will go round twice Venus and six times flies past its target – Mercury. And only in the end of 2025, having overcome more than nine billion kilometers, he will successfully enter the orbit of the smallest and hottest planet our SS.
According to the plan, BepiColombo will operate in the orbit of Mercury, at least two years, collecting various information about him, for example, even exploring how the planet interacts with the solar wind.
A unique space mission will be attended by two Russian devices developed at IKI RAS – ultraviolet spectrometer PHEBUS and gamma-neutron spectrometer MGNS.
Mercury
