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Bepi Colombo mission
October 22 , 2018
2098 days
1445
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- A British-built spacecraft, BepiColombo was launched into space from the European space port in Kourou, French Guiana.
- The joint endeavour between the ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), BepiColombo left Earth on an Ariane 5 rocket.
- It is a 7-year mission to Mercury to uncover mysteries and gather information surrounding the solar system’s innermost planet.
- In 2025 it will place two probes
- Europe's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and
- Japan's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO)
in orbit around Mercury.
- Till now, only 2 spacecraft have been to Mercury, NASA's Mariner 10 and Messenger.
- BepiColombo was named after the late Giuseppe “Bepi” Colombo, an Italian scientist and engineer who played a leading role in the 1974 Mariner 10 mission.
Key features of BepiColombo
- It is the 1st interplanetary mission to employ advanced electric ion propulsion technology, which firing two at a time, will emit beams of electrically charged xenon gas.
- It will not be used to accelerate the craft but to act as a brake against the Sun's enormous gravity.
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