Europe & Japan's BepiColombo mission set to perform first of six Mercury flybys

A joint European-Japanese spacecraft will perform the first of six Mercury flybys, each honing the spacecrafts’ trajectory with the ultimate goal of shedding enough energy, the European Space Agency informed on October 1.

According to a release issued by the agency, the BepiColombo mission will make the first of six flybys of Mercury at about 11:34 pm GMT (7:34 pm EST). The mission comprises two science orbiters which will be delivered into complementary orbits around the planet by the Mercury Transfer Module in 2025. It said the flybys will use the planet’s gravity to slow itself down. According to the press release, when the spacecraft hovers by Mercury down to an altitude of 200 kilometres, it will assemble its first data and photographs before rushing off again.

The ESA-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the JAXA-led Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, Mio, will study all aspects of this mysterious inner planet from its core to surface processes, magnetic field and exosphere, to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star, as per the release.

The joint mission by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and European Space Agency was launched in 2018. During the journey, the spacecraft will fly once past Earth and twice past Venus while approaching the hottest planet in the solar system.

Mission named after Italian scientist Giuseppe Bepi Colombo

"This first Mercury flyby will alter the spacecraft's velocity by 2.1 km/s with respect to the Sun, with the spacecraft passing just 198 km from the planet’s surface – half the altitude of the International Space Station – at 01:34 CEST on the morning of 2 October," the European Space agency said in a statement on Friday.

"For all of this to happen, BepiColombo must approach the planet from precisely the right position, and this has taken months of meticulous planning from the Flight Dynamics experts at ESA's mission control in Darmstadt, Germany," the statement added. 

The space mission is named after Italian scientist Giuseppe Bepi Colombo. The Italian scientist, mathematician and engineer at the University of Padua is popularly recognised for developing the gravity support manoeuvre that NASA’s Mariner 10 first used when it cruised to Mercury in 1974.

ESA researchers say Mercury 'most notorious' planet in solar system

According to the European Space agency scientists, reaching Mercury is actually more challenging, despite being much closer to Earth than Jupiter and Saturn. The researchers termed it the most notorious planet of the solar system. According to some estimates, it would take less energy to get to the dwarf planet Pluto than it takes to get to Mercury. The reason for that is Mercury’s closeness to the Sun. A spacecraft aiming to not only fly past Mercury while in orbit around the Sun but to enter into orbit around the planet directly has to constantly brake against the gravitational pull of the star.

(With inputs from AP, Image: @BepiColombo)