BepiColombo to fly past Mercury again on January 8, 2025
BepiColombo will do its sixth close fly-by of Mercury on January 8, 2025, zipping by its surface by only 183 miles.
It will use this opportunity to photograph Mercury, make unique measurements of the planet’s environment, and fine-tune science instrument operations before the main mission begins. This sixth and final flyby will reduce the spacecraft’s speed and change its direction, readying it for entering orbit around the tiny planet in late 2026.
BepiColombo is more than six years into its eight-year journey to planet Mercury. In total, it is using nine planetary flybys to help steer itself into orbit around the small rocky planet: one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury. Making the most of this sixth close approach to the small rocky planet, BepiColombo’s cameras and various scientific instruments will investigate Mercury’s surface and surroundings.
Once the spacecraft arrives at Mercury two years hence it will split into two orbiters in complementary orbits, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter built by Europe and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter built by Japan.
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BepiColombo will do its sixth close fly-by of Mercury on January 8, 2025, zipping by its surface by only 183 miles.
It will use this opportunity to photograph Mercury, make unique measurements of the planet’s environment, and fine-tune science instrument operations before the main mission begins. This sixth and final flyby will reduce the spacecraft’s speed and change its direction, readying it for entering orbit around the tiny planet in late 2026.
BepiColombo is more than six years into its eight-year journey to planet Mercury. In total, it is using nine planetary flybys to help steer itself into orbit around the small rocky planet: one at Earth, two at Venus, and six at Mercury. Making the most of this sixth close approach to the small rocky planet, BepiColombo’s cameras and various scientific instruments will investigate Mercury’s surface and surroundings.
Once the spacecraft arrives at Mercury two years hence it will split into two orbiters in complementary orbits, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter built by Europe and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter built by Japan.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
From ESA, an explanation as to WHY BepiColombo’s journey to Mercury is so long and complex:
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo/Why_does_it_take_so_long_to_get_to_Mercury
As you wrote in 2023 nuclear propulsion could reduce the mission times but the anti nuclear fanatics have been able to block it. Let’s hope that this is another change by the new administration.
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/scientists-rediscover-the-advantages-of-nuclear-power-for-moving-probes-through-the-solar-system/
In terms of carrying the fuel needed to fly direct and then slow down enough to enter orbit, would superheavy be able to launch such a craft? Strap on a couple of solid rocket boosters? One to leave Earth orbit. The 2nd to enter the orbit of the destination.
Steve Richter,
Patience is a virtue.
There is a saying that once you get to orbit, you are half way to anywhere in the solar system. It is a saying that is based upon a spacecraft’s delta-v, the change in speed needed to get from one place in space to another. It sounds wrong, because getting to a 150 mile circular orbit around the Earth does not seem like half way to millions of miles of distance to Mars, Venus, or Mercury, and ten-minutes to orbit is not half the months needed to get to these destinations.
Even for the delta-v aspect the saying is an exaggeration, unless aerobraking is used with a planet’s atmosphere. However, Mercury does not have an atmosphere for using this tactic for navigation. Here is a chart with estimates of delta-v needed to navigate between various places in the solar system:
http://i.imgur.com/SqdzxzF.png
The chart shows an estimated delta-v of 9½ km/sec to get to low Earth orbit (LEO) but 11 km/sec to get from there to be captured by Mercury. That means that to get into a high orbit around Mercury, you would need a larger rocket to get from LEO to Mercury orbit than you could have used to get the probe into orbit around the Earth. So, to get to Mercury would require a launch vehicle that can lift a rocket into LEO that is more massive than one to launch the probe alone into LEO. To get to Mercury, the probe would have to be fairly small and limited in its abilities.
Commenter F, above, linked to an explanation of how the probe’s namesake, Giuseppe ‘Bepi’ Colombo, described another way to save propellant mass by using gravitational slingshot maneuvers to achieve much of the delta-v without using propellant, or not using much. That is the advantage, but the disadvantage is that it takes much longer to make these maneuvers than to navigate directly to Mercury via a Hohmann transfer orbit, as you propose.
If we have patience, then we can send a probe with more instrumentation to the places that we want to explore, replacing propellant with science.