BepiColombo Status |
BepiColombo Status |
Feb 26 2007, 12:17 PM
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#16
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Member Group: Members Posts: 370 Joined: 12-September 05 From: France Member No.: 495 |
ESA gives go-ahead to build BepiColombo
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMC8XBE8YE_index_0.html BepiColombo has been definitively 'adopted' by the Agency’s Science Programme Committee (SPC) last Friday. |
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Mar 16 2007, 11:05 AM
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#17
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Special Cookie Group: Members Posts: 2168 Joined: 6-April 05 From: Sintra | Portugal Member No.: 228 |
-------------------- "Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, "If you seek for Eldorado!"
Edgar Alan Poe |
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
May 4 2007, 01:18 AM
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#18
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Guests |
I forgot to mention this at the time, but below is little tidbit from In Orbit section of the April 2, 2007, issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology:
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Oct 17 2007, 01:34 PM
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#19
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Special Cookie Group: Members Posts: 2168 Joined: 6-April 05 From: Sintra | Portugal Member No.: 228 |
-------------------- "Ride, boldly ride," The shade replied, "If you seek for Eldorado!"
Edgar Alan Poe |
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Oct 17 2007, 10:03 PM
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#20
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1592 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
Very interesting! I didn't realize that they'd proposed shedding the cruise stage and using free capture to drop into Mercury orbit.
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Oct 18 2007, 03:36 AM
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#21
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Yes...an ingenious mission profile to be sure. No lander anymore, though...?
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Oct 18 2007, 06:30 AM
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#22
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Was there ever one planned...I don't remember there ever being one as part of BC - certainly not at any point after it got approved.
Doug |
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Oct 19 2007, 09:19 AM
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#23
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Member Group: Members Posts: 599 Joined: 26-August 05 Member No.: 476 |
There was a small (Beagle-sized) lander proposed. It would have operated for a short time. The thermal protection required would have been interesting. I think you are right about it being dropped before the project was approved.
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Oct 19 2007, 02:42 PM
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#24
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
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Oct 28 2007, 09:15 PM
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#25
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 27 Joined: 27-September 07 Member No.: 3919 |
Any plans of using for example MMO -probe as a crash-lander at the end of primary mission to get some extra data from the surface, while MPO would do the imaging a'la Deep Impact? Or in case of MMO missing the necessary engines/thrust doing it vice versa? And is it so, that on those orbits around Mercury (just like Messenger), without any intervention, these probes' orbits don't decay in a traditional sense but they will get longer and higher until Sun's gravity pulls them on a heliocentric orbit...? And what would be the limit/distance for Mercury to keep a probe on a stable orbit around it?
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Oct 29 2007, 03:20 AM
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#26
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Member Group: Members Posts: 903 Joined: 30-January 05 Member No.: 162 |
IIRC, tendency of solar perturbations on an initially circular orbit about Mercury is to 'pump up' the eccentricity of the orbit. Seems like you contact the surface prior to achieving escape. Handy if you want to contact the surface, not so handy if you want to escape.
{It's been nearly 30 years since the astro class where I heard this, if my recollection has deteriorated over the decades, probably no big surprise} |
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Jan 18 2008, 03:19 PM
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#27
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Newbie Group: Members Posts: 18 Joined: 12-February 04 Member No.: 28 |
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Jan 19 2008, 02:07 PM
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#28
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Member Group: Members Posts: 121 Joined: 26-September 05 From: Philadelphia Member No.: 507 |
for those of us too lazy to do the research… what will be the major difference between messenger’s objectives at mercury and bepi-columbo’s? i would have to assume that NASA and ESA have coordinated their efforts here. i was a little shocked to discover there will be 2 missions to a planet not explored for 33 years. i would almost say its a bit overkill considering the other meaty targets in the solar system like titan, europa, enceladus… io… etc.
is it just cheaper/easier to get to mercury than any of the above? -------------------- |
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Jan 19 2008, 05:10 PM
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#29
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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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Jan 19 2008, 08:28 PM
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#30
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Member Group: Members Posts: 121 Joined: 26-September 05 From: Philadelphia Member No.: 507 |
i know there have been issues with BC, but i was under the impression that it was a done deal. ESA has it listed as a mission to be expected… is it possible they might just use it to target another body? seems hard to believe that anyone would spend all that money and energy to do a repeat mission of one that will have just been executed successfully by messenger.
personally, i’d rather they even just launch bepi-columbo and crash land it into europa, enceladus or io than another orbital mission to mercury. wouldn’t that be a thrill to see io that up-close? -------------------- |
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