{"id":19369,"date":"2021-10-04T14:16:42","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T13:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=19369"},"modified":"2021-10-04T14:16:42","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T13:16:42","slug":"bepicolombos-first-close-up-pictures-from-200km-above-mercury-hint-at-answers-to-the-planets-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/science-mct\/bepicolombos-first-close-up-pictures-from-200km-above-mercury-hint-at-answers-to-the-planets-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"BepiColombo\u2019s first close-up pictures from 200km above Mercury hint at answers to the planet\u2019s secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Written by David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences<\/a> at The Open University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0BepiColombo spacecraft<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a joint project by the European and Japanese space agencies \u2013 swung by its destination planet Mercury in the early hours of October 2 2021. Passing within just 200km of the surface of Mercury, it sent back some\u00a0spectacular pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For those of us who have worked for a decade or more on this mission, there could hardly be a way better to celebrate what would have been the 101st birthday of the mission\u2019s namesake, Italian mathematician and engineer Giuseppe Colombo. His groundbreaking work in this area earned him the title of the\u00a0grandfather<\/a>\u00a0of the planetary fly-by technique, now more often termed a \u201cswing-by\u201d.<\/p>\n

BepiColombo\u2019s cruise from Earth began in\u00a0October 2018<\/a>, and its journey is far from over. It will travel twice around the sun in the time it takes Mercury to orbit the sun three times (around 264 days). This will allow it to rendezvous with the planet for another swing-by on June 23 2022.<\/p>\n

After a total of six Mercury swing-bys, the cumulative effect of the planet\u2019s gravity will reduce the spacecraft\u2019s velocity to the point where it can fall into orbit with Mercury around the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

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Left: the location of the three MCAMs on the Mercury Transfer Module, seen in an exploded view of the spacecraft stack. Right: artist\u2019s impression of the stacked spacecraft.\u00a0Left: Micro-Cameras & Space Exploration SA. Right: spacecraft: ESA\/ATG medialab; Mercury: Nasa\/JPL<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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BepiColombo is actually composed of two\u00a0connected<\/a>\u00a0spacecraft and a propulsion unit. During its cruise through interplanetary space, the European orbiter (called the \u201cMercury Planetary Orbiter<\/a>\u201d or MPO) is attached on one side to the interplanetary propulsion unit (or \u201cMercury Transfer Module<\/a>\u201d). On the other, it carries a Japanese orbiter named Mio (or \u201cMercury Magnetospheric Orbiter<\/a>\u201d), plus a sunshield to prevent Mio from overheating.<\/p>\n

This stacked configuration obstructs the openings through which sophisticated visible, infrared and X-ray cameras inside MPO \u2013 capable of imaging and analysing Mercury\u2019s surface in great detail \u2013 will operate once MPO finally becomes free-flying. In fact, most of BepiColombo\u2019s science instruments will be wholly or partly inoperative until each orbiter is set free, around December 2025.<\/p>\n

Adding the cameras<\/h2>\n

Until a relatively late stage in mission planning, it was accepted that BepiColombo would be \u201cflying blind\u201d during its whole cruise from Earth, including during swing-bys \u2013 meaning no images would be available until orbit around Mercury had been achieved.<\/p>\n

But the level of public interest aroused in 2015 by by images of\u00a0comet 67P<\/a>\u00a0from the Rosetta mission led BepiColombo engineers Kelly Geelen and James Windsor to propose that low-cost lightweight cameras should be added to the spacecraft.<\/p>\n

By the end of 2016, it was agreed that three small monitoring cameras \u2013 each only 6.5cm in length \u2013 would be mounted onto the craft. These would snap planetary pictures during swing-bys.<\/p>\n

It was decided to place these cameras on the Mercury Transfer Module, where they would also be able to monitor the deployment of the solar panels that provide the spacecraft with power, the magnetometer boom used for measuring magnetic fields, and the communication antennae.<\/p>\n

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Extremely small and light monitoring cameras carry out a range of functions on a spacecraft such as BepiColombo.\u00a0Micro-Cameras & Space Exploration SA.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>

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What Bepi saw<\/h2>\n<\/figure>\n

During BepiColombo\u2019s first Mercury swing-by, the fields of view of monitoring cameras two and three tracked across the planet. Camera three showed us part of the southern hemisphere, beginning with a view of sunrise over\u00a0Astrolabe Rupes<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a striking feature named after a French Antarctic exploration ship.<\/p>\n

Astrolabe Rupes is a 250km long \u201clobate scarp<\/a>\u201d \u2013 a long, curved structure marking where one part of the planet\u2019s crust has been pushed over nearby terrain, due to the whole planet contracting as it slowly cooled.<\/p>\n

There are some much smaller\u00a0equivalent features<\/a>\u00a0on the Moon, but Mercury is the only nearby celestial body where lobate scarps are known to occur on such a large scale.<\/p>\n

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Astrolabe Rupes catches the light of the rising sun, captured at a range of 1183km. MPO\u2019s transmitting antenna is brightly lit in the foregound, contributing to a ghosting effect in the middle of the image.\u00a0ESA\/BepiColombo\/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Four minutes later, the perspective had changed enough to reveal a wider area: including the lava-flooded, 251km-wide\u00a0Haydn crater<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Pampu Facula<\/a>, one of many bright spots likely formed by explosive volcanic eruptions. Both of these features attest to Mercury\u2019s long volcanic history, at its most active more than three billion years ago but probably persisting until around one billion years ago.<\/p>\n

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Astrolabe Rupes is still visible in this image taken at 2687km, allowing a wider area of the planet\u2019s surface to be seen. https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Science_Exploration\/Space_Science\/BepiColombo\/BepiColombo_s_first_views_of_Mercury<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/figcaption>Meanwhile, camera two focused on Mercury\u2019s northern hemisphere, including the region surrounding\u00a0Calvino crater<\/a>: an important location for deciphering what lies in the layers of Mercury\u2019s crust.<\/figure>\n

It also showed Lermontov crater: a region which appears bright because it is host to both\u00a0volcanic deposits<\/a>\u00a0and \u201chollows\u201d, where a currently unknown\u00a0volatile ingredient<\/a>\u00a0of the crust is being lost to space via a mysterious process.<\/p>\n

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At 2418km, Mercury\u2019s North hemisphere is towards the lower left, and a brightly sunlit magnetometer boom is in the foreground.\u00a0ESA\/BepiColombo\/MTM, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Nasa\u2019s <\/span>MESSENGER<\/a>\u00a0mission orbited Mercury between 2011 and 2015, revealing a\u00a0<\/span>perplexing planet<\/a>. We are still struggling to understand its composition, origin and history.<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Why Mercury has features such as explosive\u00a0volcanoes<\/a>\u00a0and strange, unique\u00a0hollows<\/a>\u00a0on its surface is just one of the problems we hope further study will solve. Once in orbit, BepiColombo\u2019s advanced payload of scientific instruments will help us understand more about how Mercury formed and what it\u2019s made of.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, these extraordinary swing-by pictures at least remind us that we have a healthy spacecraft heading to an exciting destination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences<\/a> at The Open University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article is republished from\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0under a Creative Commons license. Read the\u00a0original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at The Open University. The\u00a0BepiColombo spacecraft\u00a0\u2013 a joint project by the European and Japanese space agencies \u2013 swung by its destination planet Mercury in the early hours of October 2 2021. Passing within just 200km of the surface of Mercury, it sent back some\u00a0spectacular pictures. For those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":19374,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,16,21],"tags":[861,1525,1640,2084,2200],"class_list":["post-19369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-mct","category-space","category-uncategorized","tag-faculty-of-stem","tag-news-home","tag-ou-home","tag-space-science","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}