On October 19th, a space mission lead by the Europeans and the Japanese begins as they send a rocket on a seven year journey to the solar systems 2nd hottest planet, Mercury.
The rocket lifted off from the European Spaceport in Kourou at 2:45 am UK time, beginning a whopping 5592340730.136 mile voyage to the closest planet to the Sun. It will get there using planetary flyby’s for gravitational assist; nine in total. What this means is the spacecraft is going to use nearby planets gravity to basically “slingshot” it towards its destination and gain momentum through doing so. They could also take this opportunity to briefly observe said planets, but BepiColombo’s main mission objectives concern Mercury.
The main objectives of the mission are to:
- Study the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star
- Study Mercury’s form, interior, structure, geology, composition and craters
- Investigate Mercury’s exosphere, composition and dynamics, including generation and escape
- Study Mercury’s magnetised envelope (magnetosphere) – structure and dynamics
- Investigate the origin of Mercury’s magnetic field
- Verify Einstein’s theory of general relativity by measuring the parameters gamma and beta of the parameterized post-Newtonian formalism with high accuracy.
