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Reaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because the planet orbits so much closer to the Sun than does the Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel 91 million kilometers into the Sun's gravitational potential well. [12] Starting from the Earth's orbital speed of 30 km/s, the change in velocity ...
Reaching Mercury from Earth poses significant technical challenges, because it orbits so much closer to the Sun than Earth. A Mercury-bound spacecraft launched from Earth must travel over 91 million kilometres (57 million miles) into the Sun's gravitational potential well.
In order to correct the speed of the satellite it undertook several gravitational slingshot flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury. It passed by the Earth in February 2005 and then Venus in October 2006 [2] and in October 2007. Furthermore, the probe made three passes of Mercury, one in January 2008, one in October 2008 and one in September 2009 ...
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MESSENGER was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. [9] [10] The name is a backronym for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging, and a reference to the messenger god Mercury from Roman mythology.
BepiColombo is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to the planet Mercury. [4] The mission comprises two satellites launched together: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO). [5]
Mercury is the second densest planet after Earth. A large metallic core takes up 85% of Mercury’s radius, and it’s also the least explored of the solar system’s terrestrial planets.
It was the twelfth spacecraft to reach Venus and the eighth to return data from the planet, [63] as well as the first mission to succeed in broadcasting images of Venus back to Earth. [64] Mariner 10 built upon observations made by Mariner 5 six years earlier; importantly, Mariner 10 had a camera whereas the prior mission lacked one. [ 65 ]