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Japan And EU Plan Joint Mission To Mercury
Devar writes "Japan and the European Space Agency have revealed their plans for a joint mission to Mercury that would be the first to land a probe on its surface. The mission also includes two orbiters to map the surface, all due to be launced in 2010."
Did you see the smoke NASA ? :-)
Pretty cool, but not nearly as great as rescuing a haywire AI while orbiting Jupiter
redune.com: The World 3.2 Megapixels at a time
How the hell are you gonna keep it lit in space?
--riney
FIRST PLANET!
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How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
There have been many missions to Venus and Mars, a few flybys of Jupiter (and Galileo orbiting Jupiter). Saturn and beyond have only flybys so far, but it takes a long time to get to them. Mercury is relatively close, is close to the sun so solar power can be used (avoiding silly controversy over nuclear power sources) and has only had one spacecraft look at it, from mainly one angle. Also, it's not the moon, but a "new" world to explore. All in all, it's a nice place to send a few robots to prove one's technology and show off, and get useful new results in a reasonable amount of time.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Even though they don't mention the name, this sounds likes they are talking about BepiColombo which has been in the works for several years now.
One of the more exciting bit about the mission is the lander (or impactor, depending) which is one of the things which distinguishes it from the US Messenger. Unfortunately, this is also one of the elements most likely to be removed, due to cost and complexity.
Actually it is rocket science...
Why did they choose Mercury? Don't get me wrong, I think it's pretty cool, but why not some of the other planets in our system? Scientists are fascinated with Mars because of the possibility of life. There's fascination about Saturn and it having a bazillion moons. Jupiter with it's nutty red spot (man that's a hell of a storm).
Well, at the moment, ESA has a mission going to Mars (Mars Express), Venus shortly (Venus Express), Saturn is covered by Huygens (in combination with Cassini).
Nothing is going to Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto at the moment, but most of those are real buggers to get to easily.
Mercury is the only planet in the inner solar system which ESA hasn't sent anything to yet (or is about to). Add to that the fact that so little is known about it, Mariner 10 left many questions unanswered, and it's about time we had a look.
Actually it is rocket science...
For a low cost mission Mercury is probably your best bet. There's no atmosphere to speak of, and external propulsion won't have to be terribly elaborate, because the sun's gravity will do most of the work. Also, as the two posters above me mentioned, very little has been studied about Mercury. On a more scientific note, mercury is the perfect place to study the effects of extreme heat and gravity on a planet and the inorganic substances that exist there. Moreover, it can provide more information about the level of radiation bombardment that could be expected for objects passing close to the sun.
All in all, it's a nice place to send a few robots to prove one's technology and show off
It is, the only problem being that it's really, really hot. As far as I understand, you have to have a reflective shield turned to the Sun at all times, and even so, your electronics are in for a very rough ride. This makes soft-landing much harder for surface probes, unless you land on the shaded side. Impact landing should be easier, but doesn't collect nearly as much information. Even worse, once you soft-land, you'll have to shield yourself from both the Sun and the ground, which makes rovers all but impossible, and soil sampling hard, too. (But if you land on the shaded side, those problems should go away.)
Also, it takes half a year to fly to Mars, but Mercury requires an elaborate orbit injection trajectory: the MESSENGER probe will spend 4 years before injection. So in terms of PR returns, it's probably better to keep sending stuff to Mars, especially because there's more to explore there. (Certainly no carbon-based life on Mercury, except maybe in craters with permanent shadow...)
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> This has me on curiosity alone.
I think you just answered your own question: Curiosity alone.
Off the top of my head, the insane spread between day/night temperatures would probably allow us to learn a lot about Mercury's composition by watching the rocks cool.
I'd imagine they can also learn a lot about the sun during the approach and insertion/landing phase.
Not do diss astrobiologists, but hey, there's more to space science than astrobiology.
For instance, if I could break any law of physics I wanted to, I'd take a vacation to admire the view from any planet (not that any planets are likely to have remained in orbit!) around this star... as it dives to within 17 light-hours of a 2.6-million-solar-mass black hole at 2.5% of the speed of light?