scholarly journals BepiColombo - Mission Overview and Science Goals

2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Benkhoff ◽  
G. Murakami ◽  
W. Baumjohann ◽  
S. Besse ◽  
E. Bunce ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Terrestrial Planet ◽  
Origin And Evolution ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joint Mission ◽  
Scientific Return ◽  
Scientific Payload

AbstractBepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, to perform a comprehensive exploration of Mercury. Launched on $20^{\mathrm{th}}$ 20 th October 2018 from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, the spacecraft is now en route to Mercury.Two orbiters have been sent to Mercury and will be put into dedicated, polar orbits around the planet to study the planet and its environment. One orbiter, Mio, is provided by JAXA, and one orbiter, MPO, is provided by ESA. The scientific payload of both spacecraft will provide detailed information necessary to understand the origin and evolution of the planet itself and its surrounding environment. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, the only terrestrial planet besides Earth with a self-sustained magnetic field, and the smallest planet in our Solar System. It is a key planet for understanding the evolutionary history of our Solar System and therefore also for the question of how the Earth and our Planetary System were formed.The scientific objectives focus on a global characterization of Mercury through the investigation of its interior, surface, exosphere, and magnetosphere. In addition, instrumentation onboard BepiColombo will be used to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Major effort was put into optimizing the scientific return of the mission by defining a payload such that individual measurements can be interrelated and complement each other.

BepiColombo – Status and first Results from Activities during Cruise

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Benkhoff ◽  
Go Murakami ◽  
Joe Zender
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Terrestrial Planet ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
First Results ◽  
French Guyana ◽  
The Individual

<p>BepiColombo was launched on 20 October 2018 the BepiColombo from the European spaceport in French Guyana and is now on route to Mercury to unveil Mercury’s secrets. BepiColombo with its state of the art and very comprehensive payload will perform measurements to increase our knowledge on the fundamental questions about Mercury’s evolution, composition, interior, magnetosphere, and exosphere. BepiColombo is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and consists of two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio). </p> <p>The BepiColombo spacecraft is during its 7-year long journey to the innermost terrestrial planet in a so-called ‘stacked’ configuration: The Mio and the MPO are connected to each other, and stacked on-top of the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM). Only in late 2025, the ‘stack’ configuration is abandoned and the individual elements spacecraft are brought in to their final Mercury orbit: 480x1500km for MPO, and 590x11640km for Mio. The foreseen orbits of the MPO and Mio will allow close encounters of the two spacecraft throughout the mission. The mission has been named in honor of Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo (1920–1984), who was a brilliant Italian mathematician, who made many significant contributions to planetary research and celestial mechanics.</p> <p>On its way BepiColombo has several opportunities for scientific observations - during the cruise into the inner solar system and during nine flybys (one at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury). However, since the spacecraft is in a stacked configuration during the flybys only some of the   instruments on both spacecraft will perform scientific observations. In April 2020 BepiColombo has passed Earth. The next planetary flyby will be on 15<sup>th</sup> October 2020 at Venus.</p> <p>A status of the mission and instruments and a summary of first results from measurements taken during the Earth flyby and during the first two years in cruise will be given.</p> <p> </p>

scholarly journals BepiColombo Science Investigations During Cruise and Flybys at the Earth, Venus and Mercury

2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Mangano ◽  
Melinda Dósa ◽  
Markus Fränz ◽  
Anna Milillo ◽  
Joana S. Oliveira ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
French Guiana ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Spacecraft Mission ◽  
Joint Mission ◽  
Science Investigations ◽  
Orbit Insertion ◽  
Inner Heliosphere

AbstractThe dual spacecraft mission BepiColombo is the first joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to explore the planet Mercury. BepiColombo was launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on October 20th, 2018, in its packed configuration including two spacecraft, a transfer module, and a sunshield. BepiColombo cruise trajectory is a long journey into the inner heliosphere, and it includes one flyby of the Earth (in April 2020), two of Venus (in October 2020 and August 2021), and six of Mercury (starting from 2021), before orbit insertion in December 2025. A big part of the mission instruments will be fully operational during the mission cruise phase, allowing unprecedented investigation of the different environments that will encounter during the 7-years long cruise. The present paper reviews all the planetary flybys and some interesting cruise configurations. Additional scientific research that will emerge in the coming years is also discussed, including the instruments that can contribute.

Europe's Path To Mars: The European Space Agency's Mars Express Mission

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo Russo
Keyword(s):  
Selection Process ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Management Approach ◽  
Mars Exploration ◽  
Mars Express ◽  
The Public ◽  
Science Programme ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
History Of

Mars Express is the first planetary mission accomplished by the European Space Agency (ESA). Launched in early June 2003, the spacecraft entered Mars's orbit on Christmas day of that year, demonstrating the new European commitment to planetary exploration. Following a failed attempt in the mid-1980s, two valid proposals for a European mission to Mars were submitted to ESA's decision-making bodies in the early 1990s, in step with renewed international interest in Mars exploration. Both were rejected, however, in the competitive selection process for the agency's Science Programme. Eventually, the Mars Express proposal emerged during a severe budgetary crisis in the mid-1990s as an exemplar of a “flexible mission” that could reduce project costs and development time. Its successful maneuvering through financial difficulties and conflicting scientific interests was due to the new management approach as well as to the public appeal of Mars exploration. In addition to providing a case study in the functioning of the ESA's Science Programme, the story of Mars Express discussed in this paper provides a case study in the functioning of the European Space Agency's Science Programme and suggests some general considerations on the peculiar position of space research in the general field of the history of science and technology.

Prospects for Life on Other Planets

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Deamer
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Hydrothermal Vents ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Extraterrestrial Life ◽  
Major Question ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Planetary Bodies ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Alternative Scenarios

This book describes a hypothetical process in which populations of protocells can spontaneously assemble and begin to grow and proliferate by energy- dependent polymerization. This might seem to be just an academic question pursued by a few dozen researchers as a matter of curiosity, but in the past three decades advances in engineering have reached a point where both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) routinely send spacecraft to other planetary objects in our solar system. A major question being pursued is whether life has emerged elsewhere than on Earth. The limited funds available to support such missions require decisions to be made about target priorities that are guided by judgment calls. These in turn depend on plausible scenarios related to the origin of life on habitable planetary surfaces. We know that other planetary bodies in our solar system have had or do have conditions that would permit microbial life to exist and perhaps even to begin. By a remarkable coincidence, the two most promising objects for extraterrestrial life happen to represent the two alternative scenarios described in this book: An origin of life in conditions of hydrothermal vents or an origin in hydrothermal fields. This final chapter will explore how these alternative views can guide our judgment about where to send future space missions designed as life-detection missions. Questions to be addressed: What is meant by habitability? Which planetary bodies are plausible sites for the origin of life? How do the hypotheses described in this book relate to those sites? There is healthy public interest in how life begins and whether it exists elsewhere in our solar system or on the myriad exoplanets now known to orbit other stars. This has fueled a series of films, television programs, and science fiction novels. Most of these feature extrapolations to intelligent life but a few, such as The Andromeda Strain, explore what might happen if a pathogenic organism from space began to spread to the human population. There is a serious and sustained scientific effort—SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence—devoted to finding an answer to this question.

scholarly journals The Rosetta Mission to Primitive Bodies of the Solar System

1994 ◽  
Vol 160 ◽  
pp. 381-394
Author(s):  
Yves Langevin
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Solar System ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Main Belt ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Rosetta Mission ◽  
One Year ◽  
Definition Of

The European Space Agency (ESA) has selected Rosetta as the next cornerstone mission, to be launched in 2003. The goal is to perfom one or more fly-bys to main belt asteroids, followed by a rendez-vous with an active comet. Advanced in situ analysis, both in the coma and on the surfaces of the nucleus, will be possible, as well as monitoring by remote sensing instruments of the nucleus and of the inner coma for a time span of more than one year, until perihelion. This paper outlines the scientific and technological choices done in the definition of the mission.

scholarly journals AIDA: Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (H16) ◽  
pp. 480-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Michel ◽  
A. Cheng ◽  
A. Galvez ◽  
C. Reed ◽  
I. Carnelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
European Space Agency ◽  
The Other ◽  
Applied Physics ◽  
Binary Asteroid ◽  
Jet Propulsion ◽  
Asteroid Impact ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Goddard Space Flight Center ◽  
Asteroid Deflection ◽  
Joint Mission

AbstractAIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment) is a project of a joint mission demonstration of asteroid deflection and characterisation of the kinetic impact effects. It involves the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (with support from members of NASA centers including Goddard Space Flight Center, Johnson Space Center, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and the European Space Agency (with support from members of the french CNRS/Cte dAzur Observatory and the german DLR). This assessment will be done using a binary asteroid target. AIDA consists of two independent but mutually supporting mission concepts, one of which is the asteroid kinetic impactor and the other is the characterisation spacecraft. The objective and status of the project will be presented.

Combining ExoMars’ Ma_MISS and Drill data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Frigeri ◽  
Maria Cristina De Sanctis ◽  
Francesca Altieri ◽  
Simone De Angelis ◽  
Marco Ferrari ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Properties ◽  
Water Content ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Mechanical Response ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Volcanic Rocks ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Geophysical Imaging

<p>The ExoMars Rover and Surface Platform planned for launch in 2022 is a large international cooperation between the European Space Agency and Roscosmos with a scientific contribution from NASA.  Thales Alenia Space is the ExoMars mission industrial prime contractor. </p> <p>Besides sensors and instruments characterizing the surface at large scale, the ExoMars’ rover Rosalind Franklin payload features some experiments devoted specifically to the characterization of the first few meters of the Martian subsurface. These experiments are particularly critical for the main ExoMars objective of detecting traces of present or past life forms on Mars, which may have been preserved within the shallow Martian underground [1].</p> <p>Rosalind Franklin will be able to perform both non-invasive geophysical imaging of the underground [2] and subsurface <em>in situ</em> measurements thanks to the Drill unit installed on the rover. The Drill has been developed by Leonardo and its purposes are 1) to collect core samples to be analyzed in the Analytical Laboratory Drawer (ALD) onboard the Rover and 2) to drive the miniaturized spectrometer Ma_MISS within the borehole.   </p> <p>Ma_MISS (Mars Multispectral Imager for Subsurface Studies, [3]) will collect mineralogic measurements from the rocks exposed into the borehole created by the Drill with a spatial resolution of 120 μm down to 2 meters into the Martian subsurface.</p> <p>Rocks are composed of grains of minerals, and their reaction to an applied stress is related to the mechanical behavior of the minerals that compose the rock itself. The mechanical properties of a mineral depend mainly on the strength of the chemical bonds, the orientation of crystals, and the number of impurities in the crystal lattice.</p> <p>In this context, the integration of Ma_MISS measurements and drill telemetry are of great importance.  The mechanical properties of rocks coupled with their mineralogic composition provide a rich source of information to characterize the nature of rocks being explored by ExoMars rover’s drilling activity.</p> <p>Within our study, we are starting to collect telemetry recorded during the Drill unit tests on several samples ranging from sedimentary to volcanic rocks with varying degrees of weathering and water content.  In this first phase of the study, we focused our attention on the variation of torque and penetration speed between different samples, which have been found to be indicative of a particular type of rock or group of rocks and their water content.  </p> <p>We are planning to analyze the same rocks with the Ma_MISS breadboard creating the link between the mineralogy and the mechanical response of the Drill.      </p> <p>This will put the base for a more comprehensive and rich characterization of the <em>in situ</em> subsurface observation by Rosalind Franklin planned at Oxia Planum, Mars in 2023. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Acknowledgments: </strong>We thank the European Space Agency (ESA) for developing the ExoMars Project, ROSCOSMOS and Thales Alenia Space for rover development, and Italian Space Agency (ASI) for funding the Ma_MISS experiment (ASI-INAF contract n.2017-48-H.0 for ExoMars MA_MISS phase E/science).</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>References</strong></p> <p>[1] Vago et al., 2017. Astrobiology, 17 6-7. [2] Ciarletti et al., 2017. Astrobiology, 17 6-7. [3] De Sanctis et al., 2017. Astrobiology, 17 6-7.</p>

The science return of the ESA Hera mission to the binary asteroid Didymos

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Michel ◽  
Michael Kueppers ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Direct Determination ◽  
Hypervelocity Impact ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Long Term Effects ◽  
Impact Speed ◽  
Asteroid Impact ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
The Impact

<p>The Hera mission has been approved for development and launch in the new ESA Space Safety Programme by the ESA Council at Ministerial Level, Space19+, in November 2019. Hera will both offer a high science return and contribute to the first deflection test of an asteroid, in the framework of the international NASA- and ESA-supported Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) collaboration.</p> <p>The impact of the NASA DART (Doube Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft on the natural satellite of Didymos in October 2022 will change its orbital period around Didymos. As Didymos is an eclipsing binary, and close to the Earth on this date, the change can be detected by Earth-based observers. ESA’s Hera spacecraft will rendezvous Didymos four years after the impact. Hera’s instruments will perform the measurements necessary to understand the effect of the DART impact on Didymos’ secondary, in particular its mass, its internal structure, the direct determination of the momentum transfer and the detailed characterization of the crater left by DART. This new knowledge will also provide unique information on many current issues in asteroid science.</p> <p>From small asteroid internal and surface structures, through rubble-pile evolution, impact cratering physics, to the long-term effects of space weathering in the inner Solar System, Hera will have a major impact on many fields. For instance, collisions play a fundamental role in our Solar System history, from planet formation by collisional accretion to cratering of solid surfaces and asteroid family formation by collisional disruption. The fully documented hypervelocity impact experiment provided by DART and Hera will feed collisional models with information obtained at actual asteroid scale and for an impact speed (~6 km/s) that is close to the average impact speed between asteroids in the main belt. Moreover, Hera will perform the first rendezvous with an asteroid binary, characterize the smallest object ever visited (165 m in diameter) and provide the first direct measurement of an asteroid interior. Additionally, studies using Hera data will in turn affect our understanding of the asteroid population as a whole. The scientific legacy of the Hera mission will extend far beyond the core aims of planetary defense.</p> <p>Acknowledgment: The authors acknowledge funding support from ESA and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 870377 (project NEO-MAPP), from the European Space Agency and from the French space agency CNES.</p>

scholarly journals Gaia Data Release 2

2018 ◽  
Vol 616 ◽  
pp. A13 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
F. Spoto ◽  
P. Tanga ◽  
F. Mignard ◽  
J. Berthier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
A Priori ◽  
European Space Agency ◽  
Dramatic Improvement ◽  
Individual Values ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Position Information ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Space Agency ◽  
Data Release

Context. The Gaia spacecraft of the European Space Agency (ESA) has been securing observations of solar system objects (SSOs) since the beginning of its operations. Data Release 2 (DR2) contains the observations of a selected sample of 14,099 SSOs. These asteroids have been already identified and have been numbered by the Minor Planet Center repository. Positions are provided for each Gaia observation at CCD level. As additional information, complementary to astrometry, the apparent brightness of SSOs in the unfiltered G band is also provided for selected observations. Aims. We explain the processing of SSO data, and describe the criteria we used to select the sample published in Gaia DR2. We then explore the data set to assess its quality. Methods. To exploit the main data product for the solar system in Gaia DR2, which is the epoch astrometry of asteroids, it is necessary to take into account the unusual properties of the uncertainty, as the position information is nearly one-dimensional. When this aspect is handled appropriately, an orbit fit can be obtained with post-fit residuals that are overall consistent with the a-priori error model that was used to define individual values of the astrometric uncertainty. The role of both random and systematic errors is described. The distribution of residuals allowed us to identify possible contaminants in the data set (such as stars). Photometry in the G band was compared to computed values from reference asteroid shapes and to the flux registered at the corresponding epochs by the red and blue photometers (RP and BP). Results. The overall astrometric performance is close to the expectations, with an optimal range of brightness G ~ 12 − 17. In this range, the typical transit-level accuracy is well below 1 mas. For fainter asteroids, the growing photon noise deteriorates the performance. Asteroids brighter than G ~ 12 are affected by a lower performance of the processing of their signals. The dramatic improvement brought by Gaia DR2 astrometry of SSOs is demonstrated by comparisons to the archive data and by preliminary tests on the detection of subtle non-gravitational effects.

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