Foi o motor e a fonte de energia da BepiColombo durante oito anos. Agora, a 200 milhões de quilómetros da Terra, o módulo que levou a missão até “perto” de Mercúrio ficou para trás, sozinho numa órbita em torno do Sol.
The post BepiColombo despede-se do módulo que a levou até Mercúrio e entra na reta final da viagem appeared first on Tek Notícias.
After nearly eight years and billions of kilometers of travel, BepiColombo -- a science mission led by ESA in close collaboration with JAXA -- has begun its long-awaited arrival at the smallest and innermost planet in our Solar System.
The post BepiColombo Begins Final Approach to Mercury appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.
The BepiColombo mission cleared a major milestone this week in the final stretch of an eight-year interplanetary voyage to Mercury, the hard-to-reach, scorching hot iron world at the Solar System's innermost frontier.
The robotic science mission, with a price tag of nearly $2 billion, is led by the European Space Agency with contributions from Japan and the United States. Since its launch in 2018, BepiColombo has spiraled closer to the Sun using a combination of plasma propulsion and a series of flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury. The maneuvers changed the spacecraft's velocity and steered it toward a final encounter with Mercury later this year.
Next time it reaches Mercury, BepiColombo will be traveling at just the right speed for the planet's gravity to capture the spacecraft into orbit. Scientists working on interplanetary missions are accustomed to long waits for scientific payoffs. It took nearly 10 years for NASA's New Horizons spacecraft to travel from Earth to Pluto. It turns out traveling to fleet-footed Mercury and then entering orbit requires more energy, or delta-v, than sending a probe to fly by Pluto.
© ESA/ATG medialab and NASA/JPL
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