READ

The biggest space mission you’ve never heard of

An ambitious project to fly to Mercury is set to be tracked from WA when it launches next year.
The biggest space mission you’ve never heard of
Image credit: ESA

Known as BepiColombo, the mission sees the European Space Agency (ESA) team up with Japan’s national space agency JAXA.

The two agencies will fly to Mercury together before separating to explore what is now the solar system’s smallest planet (since Pluto’s 2006 demotion to a ‘dwarf planet’).

Whether it triumphs or fails, the task of communicating with BepiColombo will fall partly to the monastic town of New Norcia.

THE SWIFT PLANET

Mercury is only slightly larger than the Earth’s moon and is the least explored terrestrial planet in the solar system.

It is perhaps best known for its extreme conditions, speedy orbit and weird sunrises.

Mercury’s proximity to the Sun and lack of atmosphere sees surface temperatures range from -1800C to a scorching 4300C.

Only two spacecraft—both NASA missions—have ever reached the planet.

Mariner 10 made three flybys in the 1970s, and MESSENGER orbited Mercury from 2011 until it ran out of propellant and crashed into the planet in 2015.

BepiColombo’s mission is to shed light on some of the mysteries that remain.

These include whether the core is liquid or solid and if the planet is tectonically active.

It will also probe why Mercury has a magnetic field and if there is sulphur or water ice at the poles.

View Larger
Image credit: ESA
View Larger
Image credit: ESA
View Larger
Image credit: ESA
View Larger
Image credit: ESA

THE ROAD TO LAUNCH

BepiColombo was slated for launch as early as 2013 but has been delayed several times.

The latest setback came in November when the ESA announced a major electrical problem was discovered with a power processing unit.

ESA project manager Ulrich Reininghaus said in a press statement that both units would have to be recertified for flight.

“This is expected to put back our preparations by about four months,” he said.

The current schedule has BepiColombo blasting off in October 2018.

The spacecraft will take a seven-year cruise to Mercury that includes nine flybys of Earth, Venus, and Mercury.

It is expected to finally arrive at its destination on 5 December 2025.

MONASTERIES AND DEEP SPACE

Tracking the spacecraft will be a state-of-the-art facility just 140km north of Perth in New Norcia.

The WA town best known for school camps and its community of Benedictine monks is also home to the ESA’s satellite ground station.

The station has previously supported spacecraft including Mars Express and Rosetta.

View Larger

New Norcia

New Norcia

ON THE HORIZON

Other solar system missions to watch out for next year include:

  • InSight
    This NASA-led Mars lander is due to blast off 5 May 2018, and land on the red planet 26 November 2018.
  • Solar Probe Plus
    NASA claims this will be the first mission to fly into the Sun’s upper atmosphere and “touch” the Sun. Launch window 31 July – 19 August 2018.
  • Solar Orbiter
    Not to be outdone, the ESA’s mission to explore the Sun in unprecedented detail is scheduled for launch in October 2018.
  • Red Dragon
    SpaceX announced last year it plans to send one of its Dragon spacecraft to Mars in May 2018 in preparation for future robotic and manned missions.
​Michelle Wheeler
About the author
​Michelle Wheeler
Michelle is a former science and environment reporter for The West Australian. Her work has seen her visit a snake-infested island dubbed the most dangerous in the world, test great white shark detectors in a tinny and meet isolated tribes in the Malaysian jungle. Michelle was a finalist for the Best Freelance Journalist at the 2020 WA Media Awards.
View articles
Michelle is a former science and environment reporter for The West Australian. Her work has seen her visit a snake-infested island dubbed the most dangerous in the world, test great white shark detectors in a tinny and meet isolated tribes in the Malaysian jungle. Michelle was a finalist for the Best Freelance Journalist at the 2020 WA Media Awards.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy