Mission to Mercury set to launch Saturday

By Jeyhun Aliyev

ANKARA (AA) - A joint European-Japanese mission is set to launch Saturday for the exploration of Mercury, a planet in the solar system scientists know relatively little about.

BepiColombo, a space probe jointly built by Europe's top space agency ESA and the Japanese space agency JAXA, will depart for a seven-year journey from the French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket at 01.45 GMT.

"Mercury is a planet of extremes, and getting there requires some equally extreme techniques, navigation solutions, and operations expertise," said Paolo Ferri, head of mission operations at European Space Operations Centre (ESOC).

The BepiColombo mission will be Europe’s first mission to Mercury -- the smallest and least explored terrestrial planet of the Solar System, ESA noted.

"Following its departure from Earth, the spacecraft will travel 9 billion kilometers in 7 years, completing 9 planetary flybys at a top speed of 60 kilometers per second, all in order to reach the least explored planet of the inner Solar System," Ferri said.

The ESA-built Mercury Transfer Module will carry the orbiters to Mercury using a combination of solar electric propulsion and gravity assist flybys, ESA revealed.

The ESA also noted that after its arrival at Mercury in 2025, BepiColombo will spend at least a year in orbit gathering data on Mercury’s composition, density, magnetic field, and exosphere, as well as probing the planet’s interaction with solar wind.

Rolf Densing, the director of operations at ESOC, said: "With decades of collective experience and hundreds of hours of simulation practice, teams at ESA’s mission control are ready to set out for the rocky planet."

Due to Mercury’s proximity to the Sun, as well as the challenge for the spacecraft to reach the destination without being pulled into the star’s enormous gravity, Europe’s space scientists have identified BepiColombo as "one of the most challenging long-term planetary projects ever flown".