BepiColombo 3rd Mercury flyby June 19, 2023
BepiColombo will make its 3rd flyby of the planet Mercury on June 19, 2023. The spacecraft will sweep closest to Mercury at 19:34 UTC (2:34 p.m. CDT) that day. Images to come soon!
BepiColombo is a joint Mercury mission, launched in October 2018 by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). For the past several years, our sun’s inner planets have been giving BepiColombo gravity assists, needed to enable the spacecraft to achieve a stable orbit around Mercury.
BepiColombo is due to enter Mercury’s orbit on December 5, 2025. In the meantime, there will be three more flybys after Monday’s close approach.
Why the gravity assists?
Why can’t BepiColombo just shoot on over to Mercury and go into orbit around it? It can’t, because Mercury is so near the sun.
The flyby maneuvers will keep the craft from being pulled into the sun’s gravity well. With one Earth flyby, two Venus flybys, and six eventual Mercury flybys, the spacecraft will lose enough energy that Mercury will capture it in its orbit. That’s right, we said “lose.” We typically think of a gravity assist as a way to boost a spacecraft’s energy. But a gravity assist can either speed up or slow down a spacecraft. Or it can simply change a craft’s direction.
ESA flight dynamics expert Frank Budnik explained more about this 3rd flyby:
As BepiColombo starts feeling Mercury’s gravitational pull, it will be traveling at 3.6 km/s with respect to the planet. That’s just over half the speed it approached with during the previous two Mercury flybys.
And this is exactly what the point of such events is. Our spacecraft began with far too much energy because it launched from Earth and, like our planet, is orbiting the sun. To be captured by Mercury, we need to slow down, and we’re using the gravity of Earth, Venus and Mercury to do just that.
Tricky maneuvering
Even though BepiColombo’s flight to Mercury was meticulously mapped in advance, controllers will have to make corrections during the seven years it’ll take the spacecraft to get there. In May, mission control performed a course correction that otherwise would have put BepiColombo 15,000 miles (24,000 km) too far from Mercury and on the wrong side of the planet.
Santa Martinez Sanmartin, ESA’s BepiColombo mission manager, explained more about the methods used to get BepiColombo in orbit:
This is the first time scientists are using the complex solar electric propulsion method to get a spacecraft to Mercury. And it represents a big challenge during the remaining part of the cruise phase. We have already adapted our operations concept to have additional communications passes with our ground stations, enabling us to recover faster from thruster interruptions and to improve orbit determination.
And all the while this is working with communications delays of more than 10 minutes due to the time it currently takes light signals to travel between Earth and the spacecraft.
As ESA said, the most demanding part of its journey is still to come:
After this flyby, the mission will enter a very challenging part of its journey to Mercury, gradually increasing the use of solar electric propulsion through additional propulsion periods called ‘thrust arcs’ to continually brake against the enormous gravitational pull of the sun. These thrust arcs can last from a few days up to two months, with the longer arcs interrupted periodically for navigation and maneuver optimization.
This challenging journey is one of the reasons that Mercury is one of the least explored planets in our solar system.
When will we see the images from the 3rd Mercury flby?
BepiColombo will get as close as 146 miles (236 km) from Mercury’s surface during this flyby. However, closest approach will be past the unlit portion of Mercury, so scientists won’t capture any images until a bit later. At about 13 minutes past closest approach, when the spacecraft is 1,143 miles (1,840 km) away, it will reach the illuminated part of Mercury. Then it will begin sending back black-and-white images, which will include part of the craft itself. A Mercurial selfie, if you will. ESA said the images should be available by the afternoon of June 20.
You can follow along with the #MercuryFlyby at these Twitter accounts: @esaoperations, @bepicolombo, @ESA_Bepi, @ESA_MTM and @JAXA_MMO.
Testing the instruments
The team uses these flybys as a chance to test some of the instruments. During Monday’s flyby, the magnetic, plasma and particle monitoring instruments will sample the environment. Project scientist Johannes Benkhoff said:
Collecting data during flybys is extremely valuable for the science teams to check their instruments are functioning correctly ahead of the main mission. It also provides a novel opportunity to compare with data collected by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft during its 2011–2015 mission at Mercury from complementary locations around the planet not usually accessible from orbit. We are delighted to already have data published based on our previous flybys that generated new science results, which makes us even more excited to get into orbit!
Bottom line: BepiColombo will have its 3rd flyby of Mercury on June 19, 2023. The spacecraft will eventually go into orbit around the closest planet to the sun.
The post 3rd Mercury flyby for BepiColombo, images coming soon! first appeared on EarthSky.
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BepiColombo 3rd Mercury flyby June 19, 2023
BepiColombo will make its 3rd flyby of the planet Mercury on June 19, 2023. The spacecraft will sweep closest to Mercury at 19:34 UTC (2:34 p.m. CDT) that day. Images to come soon!
BepiColombo is a joint Mercury mission, launched in October 2018 by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). For the past several years, our sun’s inner planets have been giving BepiColombo gravity assists, needed to enable the spacecraft to achieve a stable orbit around Mercury.
BepiColombo is due to enter Mercury’s orbit on December 5, 2025. In the meantime, there will be three more flybys after Monday’s close approach.
Why the gravity assists?
Why can’t BepiColombo just shoot on over to Mercury and go into orbit around it? It can’t, because Mercury is so near the sun.
The flyby maneuvers will keep the craft from being pulled into the sun’s gravity well. With one Earth flyby, two Venus flybys, and six eventual Mercury flybys, the spacecraft will lose enough energy that Mercury will capture it in its orbit. That’s right, we said “lose.” We typically think of a gravity assist as a way to boost a spacecraft’s energy. But a gravity assist can either speed up or slow down a spacecraft. Or it can simply change a craft’s direction.
ESA flight dynamics expert Frank Budnik explained more about this 3rd flyby:
As BepiColombo starts feeling Mercury’s gravitational pull, it will be traveling at 3.6 km/s with respect to the planet. That’s just over half the speed it approached with during the previous two Mercury flybys.
And this is exactly what the point of such events is. Our spacecraft began with far too much energy because it launched from Earth and, like our planet, is orbiting the sun. To be captured by Mercury, we need to slow down, and we’re using the gravity of Earth, Venus and Mercury to do just that.
Tricky maneuvering
Even though BepiColombo’s flight to Mercury was meticulously mapped in advance, controllers will have to make corrections during the seven years it’ll take the spacecraft to get there. In May, mission control performed a course correction that otherwise would have put BepiColombo 15,000 miles (24,000 km) too far from Mercury and on the wrong side of the planet.
Santa Martinez Sanmartin, ESA’s BepiColombo mission manager, explained more about the methods used to get BepiColombo in orbit:
This is the first time scientists are using the complex solar electric propulsion method to get a spacecraft to Mercury. And it represents a big challenge during the remaining part of the cruise phase. We have already adapted our operations concept to have additional communications passes with our ground stations, enabling us to recover faster from thruster interruptions and to improve orbit determination.
And all the while this is working with communications delays of more than 10 minutes due to the time it currently takes light signals to travel between Earth and the spacecraft.
As ESA said, the most demanding part of its journey is still to come:
After this flyby, the mission will enter a very challenging part of its journey to Mercury, gradually increasing the use of solar electric propulsion through additional propulsion periods called ‘thrust arcs’ to continually brake against the enormous gravitational pull of the sun. These thrust arcs can last from a few days up to two months, with the longer arcs interrupted periodically for navigation and maneuver optimization.
This challenging journey is one of the reasons that Mercury is one of the least explored planets in our solar system.
When will we see the images from the 3rd Mercury flby?
BepiColombo will get as close as 146 miles (236 km) from Mercury’s surface during this flyby. However, closest approach will be past the unlit portion of Mercury, so scientists won’t capture any images until a bit later. At about 13 minutes past closest approach, when the spacecraft is 1,143 miles (1,840 km) away, it will reach the illuminated part of Mercury. Then it will begin sending back black-and-white images, which will include part of the craft itself. A Mercurial selfie, if you will. ESA said the images should be available by the afternoon of June 20.
You can follow along with the #MercuryFlyby at these Twitter accounts: @esaoperations, @bepicolombo, @ESA_Bepi, @ESA_MTM and @JAXA_MMO.
Testing the instruments
The team uses these flybys as a chance to test some of the instruments. During Monday’s flyby, the magnetic, plasma and particle monitoring instruments will sample the environment. Project scientist Johannes Benkhoff said:
Collecting data during flybys is extremely valuable for the science teams to check their instruments are functioning correctly ahead of the main mission. It also provides a novel opportunity to compare with data collected by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft during its 2011–2015 mission at Mercury from complementary locations around the planet not usually accessible from orbit. We are delighted to already have data published based on our previous flybys that generated new science results, which makes us even more excited to get into orbit!
Bottom line: BepiColombo will have its 3rd flyby of Mercury on June 19, 2023. The spacecraft will eventually go into orbit around the closest planet to the sun.
The post 3rd Mercury flyby for BepiColombo, images coming soon! first appeared on EarthSky.
from EarthSky https://ift.tt/k8BPMjN
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