Byrner
01-23-2008, 10:13 PM
The European Space Agency (Esa) has signed an industrial contract to build a probe to send to the planet Mercury.
BepiColombo will launch in 2013 on a seven-billion-km flight to the innermost world, arriving in 2019.
The 350m-euro (£260m) deal with EADS Astrium will lead to the production of major spacecraft components in Germany, Italy, France and the UK.
BepiColombo will be one of Europe's most sophisticated scientific missions to date, Esa says.
"One of the key questions of planetary science is to understand the evolution of our Solar System," explained Dr Johannes Benkhoff, Esa's project scientist on the mission.
"And for that, Mercury is a candidate where we need to go. It is a planet of the extremes. It has huge temperature variations, it is the planet with the highest density and it has a very harsh radiation environment."
The signing comes in the same week as the US has passed by Mercury with its Messenger probe, the first spacecraft to visit the planet in more than 30 years.
Researchers hope that by following hard on the heels of the Americans, BepiColombo can help tie down the answers to the big questions that still remain over how this oddball world came into being.
In parts
The mission is a joint endeavour with the Japanese.
PLANET MERCURY
Closest planet to the Sun; smallest in Solar System
Visited by Mariner 10 in 1970s; by Messenger this week
Diameter: 4,880km, about one-third the size of Earth
Densest planet in Solar System; 5.3x that of water
Caloris basin is largest known feature (1,300km in diameter)
Possibly of water-ice in permanently shadowed craters
Huge iron core takes up more than 60% of the planet's mass
Surface temperatures swing between 425C and -180C
Has an extremely thin atmosphere (exosphere)
Only inner planet besides Earth with global magnetic field
Messenger's flyby images
Dr Johannes Benkhoff
Dr Rainer Best
Europe will produce a Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) that will be equipped with 11 scientific instruments. Flying in a polar orbit, it will study Mercury for at least a year, imaging the planet's surface, generating height profiles, and collecting data on Mercury's composition and wispy atmosphere.
Japan will be responsible for the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). It will investigate the planet's magnetic field with its five on-board instruments.
Like Earth (but unlike Venus and Mars) Mercury has a global magnetic field.
How so small a world, which appears - at the surface at least - to be utterly inactive, can produce this field is a major puzzle to planetary scientists.
Just as Messenger is a major technological advance on the Mariner 10 spacecraft which flew past the planet in the 1970s, so BepiColombo intends to improve still further the quality of the science return by introducing even more innovative approaches.
"Messenger paves the way for us," Dr Benkhoff told BBC News. "But unfortunately the Messenger will investigate in detail only one quarter of the planet; and so BepiColombo, because we are going into a roundish, much closer orbit, will be able to investigate the planet as whole."
To learn more click here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7195374.stm)
BepiColombo will launch in 2013 on a seven-billion-km flight to the innermost world, arriving in 2019.
The 350m-euro (£260m) deal with EADS Astrium will lead to the production of major spacecraft components in Germany, Italy, France and the UK.
BepiColombo will be one of Europe's most sophisticated scientific missions to date, Esa says.
"One of the key questions of planetary science is to understand the evolution of our Solar System," explained Dr Johannes Benkhoff, Esa's project scientist on the mission.
"And for that, Mercury is a candidate where we need to go. It is a planet of the extremes. It has huge temperature variations, it is the planet with the highest density and it has a very harsh radiation environment."
The signing comes in the same week as the US has passed by Mercury with its Messenger probe, the first spacecraft to visit the planet in more than 30 years.
Researchers hope that by following hard on the heels of the Americans, BepiColombo can help tie down the answers to the big questions that still remain over how this oddball world came into being.
In parts
The mission is a joint endeavour with the Japanese.
PLANET MERCURY
Closest planet to the Sun; smallest in Solar System
Visited by Mariner 10 in 1970s; by Messenger this week
Diameter: 4,880km, about one-third the size of Earth
Densest planet in Solar System; 5.3x that of water
Caloris basin is largest known feature (1,300km in diameter)
Possibly of water-ice in permanently shadowed craters
Huge iron core takes up more than 60% of the planet's mass
Surface temperatures swing between 425C and -180C
Has an extremely thin atmosphere (exosphere)
Only inner planet besides Earth with global magnetic field
Messenger's flyby images
Dr Johannes Benkhoff
Dr Rainer Best
Europe will produce a Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) that will be equipped with 11 scientific instruments. Flying in a polar orbit, it will study Mercury for at least a year, imaging the planet's surface, generating height profiles, and collecting data on Mercury's composition and wispy atmosphere.
Japan will be responsible for the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). It will investigate the planet's magnetic field with its five on-board instruments.
Like Earth (but unlike Venus and Mars) Mercury has a global magnetic field.
How so small a world, which appears - at the surface at least - to be utterly inactive, can produce this field is a major puzzle to planetary scientists.
Just as Messenger is a major technological advance on the Mariner 10 spacecraft which flew past the planet in the 1970s, so BepiColombo intends to improve still further the quality of the science return by introducing even more innovative approaches.
"Messenger paves the way for us," Dr Benkhoff told BBC News. "But unfortunately the Messenger will investigate in detail only one quarter of the planet; and so BepiColombo, because we are going into a roundish, much closer orbit, will be able to investigate the planet as whole."
To learn more click here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7195374.stm)