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+--- Thread: British-built rocket blasts off on Mercury mission (travel, vehicles) (/thread-6308.html)
British-built rocket blasts off on Mercury mission (travel, vehicles) - C C - Oct 20, 2018
A British-built spacecraft has blasted off on a seven-year mission to Mercury hoping to uncover mysteries surrounding the solar system’s innermost planet. BepiColombo was launched into space from the European space port in Kourou, French Guiana, on Saturday, as it began a five billion-mile trip to the Sun's closest natural satellite. It was carried on top of an Ariane 5, the European Space Agency's (ESA's) most powerful rocket....
A joint European-Japanese mission [...begins...] its long journey [...] (Oct. 19, Oct. 20 GMT). That mission, BepiColombo, will spend seven years cruising toward its target, where it will separate into two spacecraft and orbit Mercury for a year — or two, if the mission is extended. The measurements taken there could not only solve lingering mysteries about the innermost planet, but also about the formation of our solar system and neighboring ones. The whole mission cost the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) almost $2 billion, according to press reports...
What will the probes do? Europe's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Japan's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) have different roles. The MMO will make as its priority the study of the planet's magnetic field. It will investigate the field's behaviour and its interaction with the "solar wind", the billowing mass of particles that stream away from the Sun. This wind interacts with Mercury's super-tenuous atmosphere, whipping atoms into a tail that reaches far into space. Europe's MPO will map the terrain, generate height profiles, sense the interior, and collect data on the surface structure and composition.
[...] when they do finally arrive, it is hoped their parallel observations can finally resolve the many puzzles about the hot little world. One of the key ones concerns the object's oversized iron core, which represents 60% of Mercury's mass. Science cannot yet explain why the planet only has a thin veneer of rocks. Bepi's high-resolution data should bring us nearer to an answer. "Mercury doesn't really fit with our theories for how the Solar System formed, and we can't understand our planet fully unless we're able to explain Mercury as well," said Prof Dave Rothery, a Bepi scientist from the UK's Open University.
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