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Rare nova could be visible on Earth 'any day now,' says NASA. How to be the first to see it
4:47 p.m. ET September 5, 2024
An explosion in space so massive you'll be able to look up and see it in the night sky without a telescope could happen "any day now," a NASA expert said Wednesday.
The stellar burst, called a nova, will make it seem as if a new star is shining down on Earth. It won't stick around forever, though.
This particular nova is rare, say experts, occurring once every 80 years or so, meaning skywatchers will likely have a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to see it.
Here's what we know about T Coronae Borealis, dubbed the "Blaze Star."
According to a June article by NASA, some researchers say T Coronae Borealis could go nova by September 2024.
"We hope that it happens any day now," said Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, an assistant research scientist specializing in nova events at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who cautioned the exact date is impossible to pin down.
"The timing of when it does happen is an estimate. We hope this year, we hope this month."
The nova should be easy spot if you know where to look, say experts, and shine about as brightly as the north star.
"It's going to be very, very obvious," Hounsell said. "The star is only 3,000 light years away in the northern crown constellation, so it's going to be similar to Polaris, which is extremely bright."
That's roughly 17 quadrillion miles away. Even so, scientists with the Planetary Society say the nova explosion will likely be the brightest one witnessed on Earth since 1975.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2024/09/05/when-is-t-coronae-borealis-nova-explosion-2024-nasa-supernova-where-to-look-download-astronomy-apps/74857085007/
Join the Eclipsing Binary Patrol and Spot Rare Stellar Pairs!
Sep 05, 2024
Eclipsing binaries are special pairs of stars that cross in front of one another as they orbit—stars that take turns blocking one another from our view.
At Eclipsing Binary Patrol, the newest NASA-funded citizen science project, you’ll have a chance to help discover these unusual pairs of objects.
In Eclipsing Binary Patrol, you’ll work with real data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission.
TESS collects a lot of information! But computers sometimes struggle to tell when the data show us something unimportant, like background noise or objects that aren’t stars.
With your help, we can identify the correct targets and gain deeper insights into the behavior of double star systems.
“I've never worked as a professional astronomer, but being part of the Eclipsing Binary Patrol allows me to work with real data and contribute to actual discoveries,” said Aline Fornear, a volunteer from Brazil.
“It's exciting beyond words to know that my efforts are helping with the understanding of star systems so far away, and potentially new worlds, too!”
As a volunteer at Eclipsing Binary Patrol, your work will help confirm when a particular target is indeed an eclipsing binary, verify its orbital period, and ensure the target is the true source of the detected eclipses. You'll be essential in distinguishing genuine discoveries from false signals.
To get involved, visit our page on the Zooniverse platform and start sciencing!
https://science.nasa.gov/get-involved/citizen-science/join-the-eclipsing-binary-patrol-and-spot-rare-stellar-pairs/
Eclipses Create Atmospheric Gravity Waves, NASA Student Teams Confirm
Sep 05, 2024
Student teams from three U.S. universities became the first to measure what scientists have long predicted: eclipses can generate ripples in Earth’s atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves.
The waves’ telltale signature emerged in data captured during the North American annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) sponsored by NASA.
Through NEBP, high school and university student teams were stationed along the eclipse path through multiple U.S. states, where they released weather balloons carrying instrument packages designed to conduct engineering studies or atmospheric science experiments.
A cluster of science teams located in New Mexico collected the data definitively linking the eclipse to the formation of atmospheric gravity waves, a finding that could lead to improved weather forecasting.
“Understanding how the atmosphere reacts in the special case of eclipses helps us better understand the atmosphere, which in turn helps us make more accurate weather predictions and, ultimately, better understand climate change.”
Previous ballooning teams also had hunted atmospheric gravity waves during earlier eclipses, research that was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation.
In 2019, an NEBP team stationed in Chile collected promising data, but hourly balloon releases didn’t provide quite enough detail.
Attempts to repeat the experiment in 2020 were foiled by COVID-19 travel restrictions in Argentina and a heavy rainstorm that impeded data collection in Chile.
Project leaders factored in these lessons learned when planning for 2023, scheduling balloon releases every 15 minutes and carefully weighing locations with the best potential for success.
“New Mexico looked especially promising,” said Jie Gong, a researcher in the NASA Climate and Radiation Lab at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-investigator of the research on atmospheric gravity waves.
“The majority of atmospheric gravity sources are convection, weather systems, and mountains. We wanted to eliminate all those possible sources.”
The project created a New Mexico “supersite” in the town of Moriarty where four atmospheric science teams were clustered: two from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and one each from the State University of New York (SUNY) Albany and SUNY Oswego.
Students began launching balloons at 10 a.m. the day before the eclipse.
“They worked in shifts through the day and night, and then everyone was on site for the eclipse,” said Eric Kelsey, research associate professor at Plymouth State and the NEBP northeast regional lead.
Each balloon released by the science teams carried a radiosonde, an instrument package that measured temperature, location, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed during every second of its climb through the atmosphere.
Radiosondes transmitted this stream of raw data to the team on the ground. Students uploaded the data to a shared server, where Gong and two graduate students spent months processing and analyzing it.
Confirmation that the eclipse had generated atmospheric gravity waves in the skies above New Mexico came in spring 2024.
“We put all the data together according to time, and when we plotted that time series, I could already see the stripes in the signal,” Gong said.
“I bombarded everybody’s email. We were quite excited.”
https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/eclipses-create-atmospheric-gravity-waves/
Hubble Examines a Busy Galactic Center
Sep 06, 2024
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium.
Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands.
The compact region at its core might be the most remarkable sight. It holds an active galactic nucleus (AGN).
If IC 4709’s core just held stars, it wouldn’t be nearly as bright. Instead, it hosts a gargantuan black hole, 65 million times more massive than our Sun.
A disk of gas spirals around and eventually into this black hole, crashing together and heating up as it spins.
It reaches such high temperatures that it emits vast quantities of electromagnetic radiation, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet light and X-rays.
A lane of dark dust, just visible at the center of the galaxy in the image above, obscures the AGN in IC 4709.
The dust lane blocks any visible light emission from the nucleus itself. Hubble’s spectacular resolution, however, gives astronomers a detailed view of the interaction between the quite small AGN and its host galaxy. This is essential to understanding supermassive black holes in galaxies much more distant than IC 4709, where resolving such fine details is not possible.
This image incorporates data from two Hubble surveys of nearby AGNs originally identified by NASA’s Swift telescope.
There are plans for Swift to collect new data on these galaxies.
Swift houses three multiwavelength telescopes, collecting data in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light.
Its X-ray component will allow SWIFT to directly see the X-rays from IC 4709’s AGN breaking through the obscuring dust. ESA’s Euclid telescope — currently surveying the dark universe in optical and infrared light — will also image IC 4709 and other local AGNs.
Their data, along with Hubble’s, provides astronomers with complementary views across the electromagnetic spectrum.
Such views are key to fully research and better understand black holes and their influence on their host galaxies.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-examines-a-busy-galactic-center/
Persevering Through the Storm
Sep 05, 2024
It is dust-storm season on Mars! Over the past couple of weeks, as we have been ascending the Jezero Crater rim, our science team has been monitoring rising amounts of dust in the atmosphere. This is expected: Dust activity is typically highest around this time of the Martian year (early Spring in the northern hemisphere). The increased dust has made our views back toward the crater hazier than usual, and provided our atmospheric scientists with a great opportunity to study the way that dust storms form, develop, and spread around the planet.
Perseverance has a suite of scientific instruments well-suited to study the Martian atmosphere. The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) provides regular weather reports, the cadence of which has increased during the storm to maximize our science. We also routinely point our Mastcam-Z imager toward the sky to assess the optical density (“tau”) of the atmosphere.
There are not any signs that this regional dust storm will become planetwide — like the global dust storm in 2018 — but every day we are assessing new atmospheric data. Hopefully the skies will further clear up as we continue to climb in the coming weeks, because we are expecting stunning views of the crater floor and Jezero delta. This will offer the Perseverance team a unique chance to reflect on the tens of kilometers we have driven and years we have spent exploring Mars together.
https://science.nasa.gov/blog/persevering-through-the-storm/
Space Development Agency Will Soon Deliver Capability to Warfighters
Sept. 5, 2024
The Defense Department wants missile-tracking capability available to combatant commanders for operational use by the end of calendar year 2025, the director of the Space Development Agency said yesterday.
Derek Tournear said the agency has launched 27 demonstration satellites, while keeping one on the ground for a test bed for debugging and software updates to those satellites in geosynchronous low Earth orbit at a Defense News Conference event in Arlington, Virginia.
During the discussion of advances in missile tracking from space using data transport and missile tracking satellites, Tournear said the Space Development Agency is still in tranche 0, which means the early stages of satellite deployment for capability demonstrations.
These satellites for national security are referred to as PWSA, or proliferated warfighter space architecture.
Tranche 0 proved that Link 16 from space to warfighter is feasible, he said.
Link 16 is a secure military communications system that allows the exchange of real-time tactical data among military aircraft, ships and ground forces by U.S. and coalition forces.
Link 16 from space has "never been done before," he said. It was demonstrated with Australian partners and a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and airframe. Future tests will include Norway, Tournear said.
The next question the agency will address is: Can you do the missile-tracking mission from low Earth orbit satellites with all of the space clutter in that orbit with a dim-appearing missile in flight in real time?
The answer is yes. There's been some success zeroing in on missile or rocket "targets of opportunity," including a SpaceX launch and some classified missile launches that can't be discussed, he said.
Another question answered by tranche 0: Can DOD form an optical network in low Earth orbit using laser communications?
"Last night, it was actually demonstrated. Two tracking satellites did that, acquiring and maintaining links for several hours," he said.
Tranche 1 should be initiated around the end of this calendar year or a little after.
Tranche 2 is in the design phase, with launch scheduled to begin around September 2026.
Tranche 3 work is ongoing. These satellites have about a five-year design life, so tranche 3 will need to replenish some of the earlier satellites.
Tournear noted that his agency is a lean, fast-paced, results-driven organization that is cost-effective, and fully accountable to and supported by Congress.
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3896274/space-development-agency-will-soon-deliver-capability-to-warfighters/
S. Korea space transport ambitions hopes to challenge SpaceX
September 5, 2024
South Korea's new space agency said Thursday it was looking to grow its share of the industry and take on Elon Musk's SpaceX, as it unveiled plans to create a "space passageway".
The Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) opened in May with the goal of turning the land of K-pop into a new space powerhouse, following the United States, Russia, and China.
Seoul, which is also locked in a space race with the nuclear-armed North, has said it has goals of landing a homegrown probe on the moon by 2032, and eventually getting to Mars.
KASA said Thursday it was looking to build an entire space transport system, including a "space passageway", to take on market leaders SpaceX, owned by Musk.
"We're going to make the aerospace industry a core industry, and we're aiming for a 10 percent global market share by 2045," Yoon Young-bin, administrator of KASA, told reporters at a press conference.
Currently, transport rates for SpaceX range around $2,000 to $3,000 per kilogram, with many countries using them to get people or supplies to the International Space Station, and put satellites into orbit.
"We aim to reduce the cost of space transport within low Earth orbit to below $1,000 per kilogram," said Yoon.
KASA also said they aim to construct a space observatory, in part to improve space weather forecasting to help with a future bid to get to Mars, said John Lee, KASA vice administrator of Mission Directorates.
Modeled after the United States' NASA, KASA says it will act as an "aerospace control tower", overseeing aerospace policy, satellite development and space missions, including moon exploration.
South Korea sent up its first lunar orbiter, Danuri, in 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon rocket.
It also successfully launched its homegrown Nuri rocket and placed working satellites into orbit last year after two failed attempts.
Seoul is now gearing up for its fourth launch of the Nuri rocket in the second half of 2025.
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-korea-space-ambitions-spacex.html
Space-based experiments could help to advance early cancer detection through blood tests
September 5, 2024
Imagine a sensor so sensitive it can detect early cancer in a single drop of blood, enabling diagnosis and treatment before the first symptoms—possibly before a tumor even forms.
Next, picture a device capable of identifying trace amounts of even the smallest plastic pollutants in ocean water, empowering scientists to mitigate the environmental impact of dangerous microscopic toxic waste like nanoplastics, a subgroup of microplastics between 1 and 1,000 nanometers in size.
The catch? Blood samples and vials of contaminated water undergo screening in space, where the absence of gravity leads to an unexpected occurrence: the formation of unusually large bubbles that more efficiently concentrate substances like cancer biomarkers for detection.
This is the futuristic vision of Tengfei Luo, a researcher at the University of Notre Dame who studies mass and energy transport at the molecular level.
His concept is simple but has profound applications. By harnessing the unique properties of heat, fluid, and light and their interaction with bubbles, Luo seeks to create sensing technology that's useful on Earth but performs significantly better in the microgravity environment of space.
These sensors measure biological or chemical content by generating signals proportional to the concentration of a substance.
Luo's technology uses bubbles to concentrate and extract the tiniest substances submerged in liquid samples, promising to achieve sensitivity and accuracy in detection several orders of magnitude better than what's currently possible.
The key to this technology is freeing the bubbles from the constraints of gravity-induced forces, allowing them to act as the concentrator of targeted microscopic substances for a larger spatial extent and longer duration, making the substances easier to detect and analyze.
Luo says this biosensing method could ultimately improve the efficiency of cancer diagnostic tools reliant on highly concentrated sample extraction from liquids.
"The technology currently available to screen for early, asymptomatic cancer before a tumor is visible during imaging is very limited to just a few cancers," Luo said.
"If cancer screening using our bubble technology in space is democratized and made inexpensive, many more cancers can be screened, and everyone can benefit.
It's something we may be able to integrate into annual exams. It sounds far-fetched, but it's achievable."
The first in a series of International Space Station (ISS) Laboratory experiments aimed to study how bubbles form and grow on surfaces of different roughness when water boils in space compared with the process on Earth.
The initial experiment examined bubble behavior on one surface, and a second iteration that flew on Northrop Grumman's 17th CRS mission studied four different surfaces.
A high-speed camera inside the flight hardware captured the bubble growth process, and then Luo's team analyzed the videos together with computer simulations.
The experiment focused on two fundamental factors affecting bubble formation: the surface's texture and the surrounding liquid's movement.
According to Luo, the results are promising, showing that the bubbles grew larger and faster in space than on Earth.
Understanding the mechanisms behind bubble growth in space will help Luo advance his technology to extract extremely low concentrations of substances from liquids, which he says is the next step in detecting cancer in blood samples or minute traces of pollutants in water.
Beyond Earth applications, the technology could bolster the low Earth orbit economy and potentially accompany astronauts during deep space exploration to assess onboard water sources for contamination or monitor crew member health.
cont.
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-space-based-advance-early-cancer.html
Space Force Sweaters? Dress Uniform Development Marches On with Plans for a Pullover
September 05, 2024 at 2:52pm ET
The Space Force's new dress uniforms are now not expected to be widely available to Guardians until nearly the end of 2025, and other new clothing items could also be released alongside them.
Sarah Fiocco, a spokesperson for the Department of the Air Force, told Military.com on Wednesday in response to questions about dress uniform updates that "we anticipate service dress uniforms will be broadly available no earlier than December 2025."
The updated timeline comes after the service concluded fit testing for the seemingly science fiction-inspired dress uniforms in late 2023.
Additionally, Fiocco told Military.com that "development for optional uniform items, such as a pullover sweater, are underway."
The December 2025 rollout date will mark more than four years since the uniform's design went public at the Air Force Association's Air, Space and Cyber conference in September 2021 and the public gave mixed reviews.
"The new Space Force uniform … a blend of the Star Trek Enterprise dress uniform, but with the Mirror Universe diagonal," Peter Singer, a noted commentator on the military and author of "LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media," said in a social media post during the 2021 rollout.
The Space Force, several weeks after the unveiling, posted on Facebook that it was making changes.
"We heard your feedback," the service branch said. "New pants, new fit coming soon."
A number of changes followed shortly after, Military.com previously reported, including adding stripes down the pants, changing the pocket style, adding pockets on the lower half of the jacket, and decreasing the number of buttons on the interior enclosure of the jacket.
In September 2023, the Space Force announced that it had begun wear-testing the uniform by 100 Guardians across eight installations: Camp Smith, New York; Cavalier Space Force Station, North Dakota; Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas; Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico; Lackland Air Force Base, Texas; Landstuhl Air Base, Germany; Vandenberg Space Force Base, California; and Yokota Air Base, Japan.
Fiocco told Military.com that the fit testing "focused on durability, resulting in minor changes such as the height and construction of the coat collar."
The testing phase found that "feedback was overwhelmingly positive," Fiocco added, saying that more than 90% of test participants liked the design and over 80% approved of the overall fit.
"Upon initially viewing the new service uniform, I was attracted to the distinct look of the coat," Space Force Master Sgt. Kristopher Jaynes said last year in a news release.
"It was unlike any other dress uniform. Then, putting the uniform on, I immediately noticed how comfortable it was."
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/09/05/space-forces-long-awaited-dress-uniforms-now-arent-expected-until-december-2025.html
AstroForge plans first-ever private space mission to mine near-Earth asteroid
Sep 05, 2024 01:07 PM EST
California-based AstroForge has announced its plan to launch the first private mission to land on another body outside the Earth-moon system.
The mission is known as Vestri and aims to commercialize space mining.
The mission will involve AstroForge’s Vestri spacecraft docking on the company’s target near-Earth asteroid, whose identity remains unknown.
Mission 3: Vestri
Vestri is AstroForge’s third mission, featuring a 200 kg production vehicle.
The spacecraft is designed to return to the company’s target Near Earth Asteroid and dock with the body in space.
Vestri’s insights and characterization of the target asteroid’s composition will allow AstroForge to obtain the quality and quantity of valuable elements located on the asteroid.
The Vestri spacecraft will be developed in-house from the start and launched on Intuitive Machines’ third mission in 2025.
If successful, this mission will be the first private mission to land on another body outside of our Earth-Moon system, moving closer to realizing our mission of making off-world resources accessible to all humankind.
Cost-effective mining solution
AstroForge aims to unlock a cost-effective and sustainable mining solution that replenishes resources and safeguards Earth’s future.
It’s been an eventful few years for the AstroForge team.
The company launched its first mission in April of last year, and later this year, it will launch the second mission, Odin, to deep space.
In late August, the company announced that it had raised a $40 million Series A round, led by Nova Threshold and with participation from 776, Initialized, Caladan, YC, Uncorrelated Ventures, and Jed McCaleb.
This brings AstroForge’s total raised to date to $55 million. The company said this additional capital allows it to reshape the future again and leave an indelible mark on history.
Aiming for cobalt, nickel
AstroForge is working to source metals from space to replenish Earth’s rapidly declining critical resources, notably cobalt, nickel, and platinum-group metals.
New sources of metals are seen as necessary and potentially lucrative because the clean energy transition will mean a greater need for batteries and renewable energy infrastructure.
Cobalt, nickel, and platinum-group metals are found in asteroids—some swing by relatively close to Earth.
The ultimate goal of Vestri is to mine and refine one to two tons of material and return it to Earth.
AstroForge’s target asteroid is an M-type, “M” meaning metallic—typically nickel-iron.
The largest and most massive M-type asteroid known is 16 Psyche, which NASA’s Psyche mission is currently on the way to.
That mission will arrive in August 2029 and will take at least 21 months to map orbit and study the asteroid’s properties.
At about 140 miles (225 kilometers) in diameter, 16 Psyche is one of the most massive objects in the main asteroid belt. It’s about 230 million miles (370 million kilometers) from Earth.
The company is expected to lose communication with its first mission, Brokkr-1, this spring, and it made our last contact on May 16, 2024.
The company received downlink telemetry packets but could not close the command uplink necessary to activate the refinery payload.
https://interestingengineering.com/space/space-mission-asteroid-mining-earth
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/BepiColombo/BepiColombo_s_best_images_yet_highlight_fourth_Mercury_flyby
BepiColombo's best images yet highlight fourth Mercury flyby
05/09/2024
The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission has successfully completed its fourth of six gravity assist flybys at Mercury, capturing images of two special impact craters as it uses the little planet’s gravity to steer itself on course to enter orbit around Mercury in November 2026.
The closest approach took place at 23:48 CEST (21:48 UTC) on 4 September 2024, with BepiColombo coming down to around 165 km above the planet’s surface.
For the first time, the spacecraft had a clear view of Mercury’s south pole.
“The main aim of the flyby was to reduce BepiColombo’s speed relative to the Sun, so that the spacecraft has an orbital period around the Sun of 88 days, very close to the orbital period of Mercury,” says Frank Budnik, BepiColombo Flight Dynamics Manager.
“In this regard it was a huge success, and we are right where we wanted to be at this moment.
But it also gave us the chance to take photos and carry out science measurements, from locations and perspectives that we will never reach once we are in orbit.”
Images from BepiColombo’s three monitoring cameras have arrived back on Earth, providing a unique view of Mercury’s surface from three different angles.
BepiColombo approached Mercury from the ‘nightside’ of the planet, with Mercury’s cratered surface becoming increasingly lit up by the Sun as the spacecraft flew by.
M-CAM 2 provided the best views of the planet during this flyby, capturing more and more of the planet as BepiColombo came round to the side of Mercury lit by the Sun. M-CAM 3 also chipped in a stunning image of a newly named impact crater.
M-CAMs 2 and 3 are now switched off, but M-CAM 1 will continue imaging Mercury until about midnight tonight (24 hours after closest approach), getting a beautiful view of the planet receding into the distance.
Four minutes after closest approach, a large ‘peak ring basin’ came into BepiColombo’s view.
These mysterious craters – created by powerful asteroid or comet impacts and measuring about 130–330 km across – are called peak rings basins after the inner ring of peaks on an otherwise flattish floor.
This large crater is Vivaldi, after the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741).
It measures 210 km across, and because BepiColombo saw it so close to the sunrise line, its landscape is beautifully emphasised by shadow.
There is a visible gap in the ring of peaks, where more recent lava flows have entered and flooded the crater.
First sight of crater newly named after New Zealand artist
Just a couple of minutes later, another special peak ring basin came into view. This one measures 155 km across.
“When we were planning for this flyby, we saw that this crater would be visible and decided it would be worth naming due to its potential interest for BepiColombo scientists in the future,” explains David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the UK’s Open University and a member of the BepiColombo M-CAM imaging team.
Following a request from the M-CAM team, the ancient crater was recently assigned the name Stoddart by the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature after Margaret Olrog Stoddart (1865–1934), an artist from New Zealand known for her flower paintings.
“Mercury’s peak ring basins are fascinating because many aspects of how they formed are currently still a mystery.
The rings of peaks are presumed to have resulted from some kind of rebound process during the impact, but the depths from which they were uplifted are still unclear,” continues David.
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Many of Mercury’s peak ring basins have been flooded by volcanic lava flows long after the original impact.
This has happened inside both Vivaldi and Stoddart. Inside Stoddart, the trace of a 16-km-wide crater that must have formed on the original floor is clearly visible through a covering of more recent lava flows.
Peak ring basins are among the high-priority targets for study by BepiColombo once it gets into orbit around Mercury and is able to deploy its full suite of scientific instruments.
The snapshots seen during this flyby are among BepiColombo’s best so far – taken from the closest distance yet, with Mercury’s surface well-lit by the Sun.
They reveal a surface with clear signs of 4.6 billion years of bombardment by asteroids and comets, hinting at the planet’s place in the wider Solar System evolution.
It’s worth remembering that these images are a bonus: the M-CAMs were not designed to photograph Mercury but the spacecraft itself, especially during the challenging period just after launch.
They provide black-and-white 1024x1024 pixel snapshots. BepiColombo’s main science camera is shielded during the journey to Mercury, but it is expected to take much higher-resolution images after arrival in orbit.
In 2027, the main science phase of the mission will begin. The spacecraft’s suite of science instruments will reveal the invisible about the Solar System’s most mysterious planet, to better understand the origin and evolution of a planet close to its host star.
But the work has already begun, with most of the instruments switched on during this flyby, measuring the magnetic, plasma and particle environment around the spacecraft, from locations that will not be accessible when BepiColombo is actually in orbit around Mercury.
BepiColombo comprises two science orbiters that will circle Mercury – ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.
The two are carried together to the mysterious planet by the Mercury Transfer Module.
Even though the three parts are currently in ‘stacked’ cruise configuration, meaning many instruments cannot be fully operated, they can still get glimpses of science and enable instrument teams to check that their instruments are working well ahead of the main mission.
"BepiColombo is only the third space mission to visit Mercury, making it the least-explored planet in the inner Solar System, partly because it is so difficult to get to," says Jack Wright, ESA Research Fellow, Planetary Scientist, and M-CAM imaging team coordinator.
"It is a world of extremes and contradictions, so I dubbed it the ‘Problem Child of the Solar System’ in the past.
The images and science data collected during the flybys offer a tantalising prelude to BepiColombo's orbital phase, where it will help to solve Mercury's outstanding mysteries."
This fourth Mercury flyby has lined BepiColombo up for a fifth and sixth flyby of the planet on 1 December 2024 and 8 January 2025. Each is bringing the spacecraft more in tune with the orbit of Mercury around the Sun.
The BepiColombo flight control team will remain extra busy until the end of the sixth flyby, after which they return to normal cruise operations for almost two years, until BepiColombo enters orbit around Mercury in November 2026.
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