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Planetary Exploration of Mercury With BepiColombo and Prospects of Studying Venus During Its Cruise Phase

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Abstract

Mercury and Venus are key planets for the understanding of the evolution of our solar system and therefore also for the question of how the Earth and life formed. In the case of Mercury, it is mainly because of its position among the planets. It is the planet closest to the Sun and experiences the harsh environment of the Sun the most. Venus is more Earth-like in respect of its size and the existence of an atmosphere which could indicate the possibility of having been habitable in the past. BepiColombo is a planetary mission devoted to the thorough exploration of Mercury and its environment. The mission will be carried out as a joint project between ESA and JAXA. The mission consists of two spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MIO), carrying a comprehensive suite of instruments which will carry out scientific measurements. BepiColombo, launched on 20 October 2018 from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, is now en route to Mercury. Its route requires a 7.2-year-long cruise phase, with one Earth flyby, two Venus flybys and six Mercury flybys before arriving at Mercury at the end of 2025. After a weak gravity capture maneuver, both spacecraft will be placed into their dedicated polar orbits of 590 x 11,640 km (MIO) and 480 x 1500 km (MPO), respectively. As part of the cruise phase, BepiColombo will also fly past Venus twice. The two flybys at Venus will give scientists good opportunities to study the atmosphere and ionosphere of Venus in more detail.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ESA-ESTEC, Science and Operations Department, Noordwijk, The Netherlands

    Johannes Benkhoff & Joe Zender

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  1. Johannes Benkhoff
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  2. Joe Zender
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Correspondence to Johannes Benkhoff .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Candida Oancea Institute, Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Viorel Badescu

  2. Honeybee Robotics, Altadena, CA, USA

    Kris Zacny

  3. California Institute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Yoseph Bar-Cohen

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Benkhoff, J., Zender, J. (2023). Planetary Exploration of Mercury With BepiColombo and Prospects of Studying Venus During Its Cruise Phase. In: Badescu, V., Zacny, K., Bar-Cohen, Y. (eds) Handbook of Space Resources. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97913-3_8

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