Business Weekly

 The Stevenage company is making an ion engine powering the spacecraft which will achieve 17.8 million miles to the gallon – the most fuel-efficient engine ever to leave earth.

A combination of a conventional chemical propulsion system with an innovative ion propulsion system will provide the required thrust on BepiColombo’s six-year journey to Mercury.

Representatives for ESA and Astrium signed the prime contract during a ceremony at Astrium’s European headquarters in Friedrichshafen, Germany.

The mission, which will be Europe’s first ever visit to the hottest planet in our solar system, is considered to be the most sophisticated scientific mission in the history of European space exploration to date.

The trip to the Sun’s closest neighbour is planned for an August 2013 launch from ESA’s Kourou station in French Guyana.

BepiColombo is the first dual mission to Mercury, carried out as a joint mission under ESA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

BepiColombo will study and understand the composition, geophysics, atmosphere, magnetosphere and history of Mercury, the least-explored planet in the inner Solar System.

Johannes Benkhoff, ESA Project Scientist for BepiColombo, has said the mission plans to “address scientific questions such as the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star, the status of the planet’s interior and of its magnetic field, as well as a test of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity.”

The BepiColombo unit will consist of three modules: a European orbiter, a Japanese orbiter and a transfer module carrying the two spacecraft to Mercury.
 
It will carry 250 gallons of fuel and have a height of approximately five metres and a mass of about three tonnes, of which about 50 per cent is propellant.

The European “Mercury Planetary Orbiter” (MPO) will be equipped with 11 scientific instruments that will collect data about the planet.

Under ESA’s responsibility, the MPO will study the surface and the internal composition of the planet at different wavelengths and with different techniques.

Flying in a polar orbit, it will study Mercury for at least a year, imaging the planet’s surface, generating height profiles, and collecting data on Mercury’s composition and atmosphere.

The Japanese spacecraft, “Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter” (MMO), will use its five on-board instruments to study the magnetosphere, or the region of space around the planet that is dominated by its magnetic field.

Astrium in the UK will be responsible for the structure of the entire spacecraft including the launch vehicle adapter, the complex mission analysis that will require numerous swing-bys of the Earth, the moon, and Venus in its six-year flight plan, and also the two propulsion systems.

Astrium in Friedrichshafen is responsible for the entire “three-section” spacecraft, Including attitude and orbit control design and development. The integration of the engineering model of BepiColombo will take place in Friedrichshafen.

Astrium in France will develop the on-board software, building on experience gained from the Rosetta, Mars Express and Venus Express probes which are already in space.

Most of the technical challenges Astrium will face stem from Mercury’s proximity to the sun, said an ESA spokesperson.

Solar radiation is about 10 times more powerful than here on Earth, and temperatures can reach 470 degrees Celsius on the surface of the planet.

Astrium experts plan to protect the craft’s electronics and scientific instruments from the intense heat by using a variety of techniques, including a newly designed insulating blanket made of a combination of glass fibre, titanium film and ceramic fibres, and a radiator to release the heat from the probe’s interior into space.

Special solar arrays capable of supplying power in 250-degree heat will also be used.

Jeremy Close, spokesman for Astrium UK, said experts hope this visit to Mercury can help them understand the early origins of the universe, including all of the inner planets.

 

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed