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Update: Launch was successful.
The BepiColombo mission to Mercury is set for launch on Saturday, October 20. The spacecraft consists of two satellites which will eventually detach and settle into two separate orbits around Mercury:
BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to the planet Mercury. The mission comprises two satellites to be launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO). The mission will perform a comprehensive study of Mercury, including its magnetic field, magnetosphere, interior structure and surface. It is scheduled to launch in October 2018, with an arrival at Mercury planned for December 2025, after a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and six flybys of Mercury. The mission was approved in November 2009, after years in proposal and planning as part of the European Space Agency's Horizon 2000+ program; it will be the last mission of the program to be launched.
[...] The main objectives of the mission are:
- Study the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star
- Study Mercury as a planet—its form, interior, structure, geology, composition and craters
- Investigate Mercury's exosphere, composition and dynamics, including generation and escape
- Study Mercury's magnetised envelope (magnetosphere) - structure and dynamics
- Investigate the origin of Mercury's magnetic field
- Verify Einstein's theory of general relativity by measuring the parameters gamma and beta of the parameterized post-Newtonian formalism with high accuracy.
The first event will be an Earth flyby on April 6, 2020, followed by a Venus flyby on October 12, 2020. The spacecraft's first Mercury flyby will be on October 2, 2021.
Previously: ESA Shows off BepiColombo Mercury Orbiters Ahead of 2018 Launch
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:22PM (7 children)
Mercury: 1 flyby (Mariner 10 in 1975), 1 orbiter (MESSENGER)
Venus: 6 successful flybys (3 for gravity assists) with observations, 19 successful orbiters and/or landers and/or atmospheric probes. The Soviet Union was especially prolific here.
Mars: a shitload of orbiters, landers, rovers, and flybys.
Jupiter: 7 flybys, 2 orbiters
Saturn: 3 flybys, 1 orbiter
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto: 1 flyby
Cool that Mercury is getting another look. But as I keep asking, why aren't the ice giants getting more attention?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday October 18 2018, @02:39PM (3 children)
Uranus and Neptune Are Potential Targets for 2030s Missions [soylentnews.org]
NASA Wants to Probe Deeper Into Uranus Than Ever Before [soylentnews.org]
They are more expensive to reach, and missions to them take much longer.
Saturn's Enceladus and Titan are high-priority moons. Jupiter's Europa is a high-priority moon (Ganymede and Callisto are important but Europa is on another tier of importance, with Congress mandating a mission there). Jupiter is important to study because of its big gravitational impact on the solar system.
Not only is Jupiter closer, we can send solar-powered missions there now [wikipedia.org].
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Neptune [wikipedia.org]
Obviously that applies to BFR, maybe moreso since it can do in-orbit refueling (possibly more than once if you use a lot of BFRs).
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(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:47PM (2 children)
I have some difficulty crediting that the mere distance to Uranus and Neptune are that big a problem. They're further, but not that much further than Saturn.
But perhaps I underestimate the problems of traversing that relatively modest bit of extra distance? Maybe it's that the much smaller mass of ice giants as compared to the gas giants makes it correspondingly harder to do an orbital insertion? The technique of swinging past Mercury several times is relatively quick because Mercury's orbit is so fast, takes only a few years. To do the same way out at Uranus would take decades.
Planet 9 now, yes, that's far enough away that different techniques will be needed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 18 2018, @06:03PM (1 child)
What are you talking about? Saturn's orbit is about 9 AU, Uranus is about 19, and Neptune is 30! That's two and three times the distance of Saturn, respectively! And it took over six and a half years to get Cassini to Saturn!
SPACE IS BIG!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 18 2018, @10:27PM
Also, Jupiter, which is by far the top outer solar system destination [wikipedia.org], is roughly 5.2 AU from the Sun.
Two more missions are going to Jupiter soon, the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer [wikipedia.org] and Europa Clipper [wikipedia.org]. In July 2019, we will find out if NASA will send a drone/octocopter [wikipedia.org] to Titan.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @04:34PM (2 children)
On top of being harder to reach, and being reached long after their sponsors can take election credit for, we don't know how to land on a gas planet.
The inner planets, and the various moons up to Saturn, fit the "Explorer with flag standing on piece of conquered land" imagery a lot better. Studying stuff you can't invade is just not the same.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:19PM (1 child)
Uranus has decent-sized moons, and Neptune has Triton. All should be visited.
But none of these moons are considered as important as Europa, Callisto, Enceladus, and Titan.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 18 2018, @05:40PM
No question that we could do with a few less weapons around the world and a few more space probes instead. Budget priorities... Explore ALL the moons !!
But the Jupiter/Saturn moons are exposed to more interesting forces and energies, and are much easier to reach and study with current tech, so it's easy to see why the far away stuff isn't as high priority compared to the closer brighter warmer more rocky bodies.