Spacecraft ready to take off this week for Mercury

Taking eyes off Mars for a moment, European Space Agency (ESA) is now aiming to set off craft for the first planet of our Solar System, Mercury.

ESA’s BepiColombo is set to take off from Earth to Mercury, the closet planet to the sun, in order to explore more about its hellish atmosphere where temperature soar up to 450°C.

The approximately €1.6bn mission, set to launch this Saturday, October 20, will send two orbiters to the planet, carrying futuristic ion electric propulsion driver. Four ion engines on the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM) transporting the orbiters will provide thrust by electrically ejecting ‘plasma’ of charged xenon gas, explained Independent.

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The four ton spacecraft will be launched into an ‘escape trajectory’ orbit by ESA’s most powerful rocket, the Ariane 5, from the European Spaceport in French Guiana. From there, the craft will set off for a seven year long, 8.5 billion km journey with flybys around Earth, Venus and Mercury. After flying-by Mercury sic times while crossing its orbital path, BepiColombo will finally arrive at its destination in 2025.

After then, ESA’s Mercury Planet Orbiter (MPO) and Japanese space agency JAXA’s Mercury Magnetosperic Orbiter (MMO) will then separate to study the planet for up to two years. While the MPO will make global Map’s of the planet’s surface chemistry and geological features, the MMO will investigate Mercury’s internal structure and magnetic field.

According to Telegraph, it is hoped that the mission will help scientists figure out if the planet contains water since Mercury’s tilt causes some areas to be in permanent shade where temperature can fall to -180°C, allowing ice to form.

Till now, only two spacecraft have previously visited Mercury; NASA’s Mariner 10 that flew past the planet three times in 1974-75, and NASA’s Messenger probe that orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, taking photos of the surface.