Incredible footage shows the moment British-built spacecraft BepiColombo makes a close flyby of Earth on its five-billion-mile journey to MERCURY
British-built spacecraft BepiColombo has taken captivating footage of Earth during a close flyby of our planet.
Images and video of the moment the craft flew 7,900 miles (12,700km) above the South Atlantic Ocean were beamed to the European Space Agency's headquarters in Germany.
A variation of camera angles caught the transit from differing perspectives, and the craft is now continuing on its seven-year-long journey to study Mercury.
BepiColombo's five-billion-mile odyssey started in October 2018 and will conclude in 2025, following two flybys of Venus and six of Mercury itself.
British-built spacecraft BepiColombo has taken captivating footage of Earth during a flyby of our planet. Images and video of the moment the craft flew 12,700km above the South Atlantic Ocean were beamed to headquarters on Earth
A variation of camera angles caught the transit past Earth (pictured) from differing perspectives and the craft is now heading towards Mercury
This photo made available by the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency shows the earth as seen by the BepiColombo spacecraft on April 10, 2020
The ESA's European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, tracked its progress as it passed by the Earth.
'Each planetary encounter over the next few years gently slows BepiColombo down, so that we can eventually achieve orbit around Mercury in 2025,' says Professor Emma Bunce, from the University of Leicester's School of Physics and Astronomy.
In 2025, BepiColombo will place two probes – one European and one Japanese – in orbit around Mercury, the least explored world in the solar system.
BepiColombo has a range of complex equipment to help study Mercury, but also has three cameras attached to the hull of the spaceship.
These cameras provided the view of Earth, seen as a rotating sphere in the video.
BepiColombo, the British-built spacecraft destined for Mercury, bid a final farewell to Earth before heading to Mercury, the tiny rocky planet closest to the sun
The spacecraft has a high-resolution scientific camera on-board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) as well as the three monitoring cameras.
However, this camera is attached to the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) and only becomes available after the two segments of BepiColombo — the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) — have detached.
This will happen as the mission arrives at Mercury in 2025.
BepiColombo's seven-year journey is a joint mission between the ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The former will study the planet's magnetic field as well as its interactions with the sun, and latter will map Mercury in great detail.
'This is an important milestone for the mission, and hence for our instrument on board,' Professor Bunce, who helped build an instrument on BepiColombo, said of the flyby at the weekend.
One piece of equipment on board, the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS), was built by the University of Leicester and funded by the UK Space Agency.
It will work alongside a second spectrometer called SIXS to analyse surface composition via fluorescent X-rays when it arrives at Mercury in December 2025.
Incredible footage shows the moment British-built spacecraft BepiColombo makes a close flyby of Earth on its five-billion-mile journey to MERCURY
![Incredible footage shows the moment British-built spacecraft BepiColombo makes a close flyby of Earth on its five-billion-mile journey to MERCURY]()
Reviewed by Your Destination
on
April 15, 2020
Rating:
No comments