On Sunday 1 December 2024, BepiColombo will fly previous planet Mercury for the fifth time, readying itself for getting into orbit across the Photo voltaic System’s mysterious innermost planet in 2026.
The spacecraft will fly between Mercury and the Solar, attending to inside 37 630 km from the small planet’s floor at 15:23 CET. That is a lot farther than its first 4 flybys of the planet, when BepiColombo flew as shut as 165–240 km from the floor.
What makes this flyby particular is that it will likely be the primary time that BepiColombo’s MERTIS instrument is ready to observe Mercury. This radiometer and thermal infrared spectrometer will measure how a lot the planet radiates in infrared gentle, one thing which is determined by each the temperature and composition of the floor.
This would be the first time that any spacecraft measures what Mercury appears to be like like in mid-infrared wavelengths of sunshine (7–14 micrometres). The info that MERTIS will accumulate all through the mission will reveal what forms of minerals the planet’s floor is product of, one of many key Mercury mysteries that BepiColombo is designed to deal with.
BepiColombo’s different science devices will monitor the atmosphere exterior Mercury’s magnetic discipline. Amongst different issues, they may measure the continual (however changeable) stream of particles coming from the Solar referred to as the photo voltaic wind.
The opposite devices switched on throughout this flyby are the magnetometers MPO-MAG and MMO-MGF, the MGNS gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, the SIXS X-ray and particle spectrometer, the MDM mud monitor and the PWI instrument which detects electrical fields, plasma waves and radio waves.
BepiColombo, a joint mission between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company (JAXA), would be the second and most complicated mission ever to orbit Mercury. It contains two science orbiters: ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. Whereas on their approach to Mercury, the 2 orbiters are each hooked up to the Mercury Switch Module.
[Image description: Infographic explaining BepiColombo’s fifth flyby of Mercury. In the centre of the graphic we see the spacecraft flying past the planet. On the left we see the inner Solar System in perspective, with the positions of Mercury, Venus and Earth indicated. On the right we see which of BepiColombo’s instruments will be activated during the flyby.]
