BepiColombo Status Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

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

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

That Aviation Week article adds that LISA is also on somewhat better footing than BepiColombo and Solar Orbiter.

[The Messenger]

That Aviation Week article adds that LISA is also on somewhat better footing than BepiColombo and Solar Orbiter.

Should LISA still be funded, if the current (S5) LIGO run continues to roll snake eyes? If we are certain we can achieve a couple of orders of magnitude of higher resolution I would say yes, but it seems to me that this would be a daunting challenge, in space.

[jamescanvin]

Should LISA still be funded, if the current (S5) LIGO run continues to roll snake eyes? If we are certain we can achieve a couple of orders of magnitude of higher resolution I would say yes, but it seems to me that this would be a daunting challenge, in space.

Deja vu! - We've already had this conversation!

From this thread

One more question about LISA - unless and until the current LIGO generation of gravity antenna detect ANY gravitational phenomena, should we be vesting in another experiment? IAOTO the waves do exist, but we may be searching with the wrong kind of antenna.

Well LISA will be serching in a completely different frequency band. A band which should include waves from binary neutron stars which pretty much must exists given current observations (and at a known amplitude), unlike LIGO which can only detect much more exotic and theoretical objects and mergers. So yes I do think it's worth investing in, even given the non-detections at LIGO.

Damn! I'll say we need LISA, yesterday, not too many years from now. Any chance of  bumping LISA ahead of PLANCK? The CMB has a local contamination issue that needs to be resolved to reathenticate, if possible, the accuracy of the WMAP results. 

But A drag-free triangulated laser ranged probe orbiting the Sun will also provide constraints upon Pioneer-like acceleration anomalies if they effect lasar ranging.

[ljk4-1]

MERCURY RISING

- The SIXS Instrument By Finnish Astronomers Goes To Mercury

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/The_SIXS...To_Mercury.html

Helsinki, Finland (ESA) Feb 16, 2006 - The European Space Agency (ESA) is
launching a mission to Mercury, in which there is significant Finnish involvement.

On Thursday 9 February 2006, the Science Programme Committee of the ESA
held a meeting to approve the agency's next cornerstone programme, the
spacecraft named BepiColombo, which is due to be launched towards Mercury
in 2013.