BepiColombo Status |
BepiColombo Status |
Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Dec 1 2005, 12:11 AM
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#1
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Excerpt from a News article by Jenny Hogan in the December 1, 2005, issue of Nature:
"The [funding] situation has led to speculation that BepiColombo, a mission destined for a 2013 launch to Mercury, might be cancelled. 'That is the big danger painted in the sky,' says Karl-Heinz Glassmeier, principal investigator on one of the instruments proposed for the spacecraft. "Nerves were set jangling about the project, which also involves the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, after it was postponed because the initial design was too heavy. That problem seems to have been solved, but officials say the estimated cost of the mission, at 600 million [euros] to 650 million [euros], is still more than 100 million [euros] above target." Reference: Europe's cash crisis puts space plans under threat Jenny Hogan Nature 438, 542-543 (2005) doi:10.1038/438542a Full Text |
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Jan 19 2008, 05:10 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
As far as I know, the people designing Bepi-Columbo are not working in concert with the Messenger team in any way. And B-C has a rather checkered history in the first place, it's launch date has been pushed back several times and its mission rescoped even more times.
B-C is one of those projects that I will believe when I see it actually built, launched and working. And not until then. As far as I'm concerned, it makes little sense to worry about whether or not it's a complementary mission to Messenger until the odds of it actually flying improve beyond "maybe someday"... *sigh*... Besides, unlike the results from Messenger, only three people in the world will ever see more than three or four images from B-C even if it does fly, so I don't know why anyone would be worried about it in the first place. -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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