Published 16:24 IST, December 26th 2020
British-built spacecraft to make first flyby to Venus on Dec 27 amid holiday season: ESA
ESA stated the UK-built spacecraft operations managers will closely monitor flyby 2025 onwards, as it will have closest encounters of just few hundred kilometer
A UK designed spacecraft is set to make its first flyby of Venus as it will head for the Sun in a mission to decode the mysteries of the neighbouring planet. The spacecraft is expected to incline in a tilt under the influence of the Sun’s gravitational force as it will face Venus to make observations that will help scientists learn more about the planet. The Solar Orbiter’s perihelion to the Sun will occur on December 27, at about 12:39 UTC (13:39 CET) amid the holiday season, according to ESA. The spacecraft will fly some 7,500 km from the Venus cloud tops.
In an official release, the ESA stated that the spacecraft operations managers will closely monitor the flyby 2025 onwards, as it will have closest encounters of just a few hundred kilometres with the planet. During the recent anticipated event around the time of festivities, several in-situ science instruments such as MAG, RPW and some sensors of EPD will be activated to capture the magnetic, plasma and particle environment around the spacecraft as it heads closer to the Venus.
Spacecraft 235 million kms from Earth
“In order to properly line up for the flyby, specialists from ESA's ground stations and flight dynamics teams conducted a ‘Delta-DOR’ campaign, using an advanced technique – Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging – to precisely determine the spacecraft's position in space and its trajectory,” the European Space Agency informed in a release. It added that a set of Delta-DOR equipment would be installed on the Earth to receive the spacecraft's radio signals, which will also track its location. “The Delta-DOR technique allows operators to determine where a spacecraft is to within a few hundred metres, even at a distance of 100 million km,” the agency informed.
As of December 17, the UK designed spacecraft was spotted nearly 235 million kilometres from Earth, and about 10.5 million from Venus. Scientists estimated that it took about 13 minutes for the signals to travel to (or from) the spacecraft. According to scientists, the solar orbiter is ‘in resonance’ with Venus, which implies that the spacecraft will be in the vicinity of the planet every few orbits. The next encounter is expected to occur in August 2021.
Updated 16:24 IST, December 26th 2020