{"id":86,"date":"2018-10-23T09:11:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-23T09:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/?p=86"},"modified":"2018-10-23T09:11:10","modified_gmt":"2018-10-23T09:11:10","slug":"ariane-5-rocket-heads-to-mercury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/ariane-5-rocket-heads-to-mercury\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariane 5 Rocket Heads To Mercury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>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.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s for gravitational assist; nine in total. What this means is the spacecraft is going to use nearby planets gravity to\u00a0basically &#8220;slingshot&#8221; it towards its destination and gain momentum through doing so. They could also take this opportunity to briefly observe said planets, but\u00a0BepiColombo\u2019s main mission objectives concern Mercury.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-91\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/10\/p06pcy49-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/10\/p06pcy49-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/10\/p06pcy49-624x351.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/10\/p06pcy49.jpg 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The main objectives of the mission are to:<sup id=\"cite_ref-ISAS_homepage_2-1\" class=\"reference\"><\/sup><sup id=\"cite_ref-FACTS2_12-0\" class=\"reference\"><\/sup><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Study the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star<\/li>\n<li>Study Mercury&#8217;s form, interior, structure, geology, composition and craters<\/li>\n<li>Investigate\u00a0Mercury&#8217;s exosphere, composition and dynamics, including generation and escape<\/li>\n<li>Study Mercury&#8217;s magnetised envelope (magnetosphere) &#8211; structure and dynamics<\/li>\n<li>Investigate the origin of\u00a0Mercury&#8217;s magnetic field<\/li>\n<li>Verify Einstein&#8217;s theory of\u00a0general relativity\u00a0by measuring the parameters\u00a0<i>gamma<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0<i>beta<\/i>\u00a0of the\u00a0parameterized post-Newtonian formalism\u00a0with high accuracy.<sup id=\"cite_ref-13\" class=\"reference\"><\/sup><sup id=\"cite_ref-14\" class=\"reference\"><\/sup><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":93,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}