BepiColumbo gets advanced ION engines....

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Link....<br /><br /><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr /><p>Most Advanced Ion Engines For 2013 BepiColumbo Mission to Mercury<br /><br />British scientists have been given the green light to begin the development of the most advanced ion engines ever to be used in space travel history. Set for launch in 2013, the European/Japanese BepiColumbo mission to Mercury will be propelled to the Solar System's innermost planet by advanced ion engines, with an efficiency equivalent to 17.8 million miles per gallon. This is one very cheap spaceship to fly!<br /><br />We are currently being dazzled and amazed at the sheer detail of the images being transmitted by NASA's MESSENGER mission flyby of the tiny planet Mercury. While we watch and wait for MESSENGER to eventually establish an orbit (insertion should occur in the spring of 2011), UK scientists, working with the ESA and Astrium (Europe's largest space contractor), are hard at work designing the engines for the next big mission to the inner Solar System: BepiColumbo. The mission consists of two orbiters: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), to carry out mapping tasks over the planet, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), to characterize the planets mysterious magnetosphere. The two craft will travel as one for the 6 year journey to Mercury, but separate at orbital insertion.<br /><br />Although BepiColumbo will use the gravitational pull of the Moon, Earth, Venus and then Mercury to actually get it to its destination, a large amount of energy is required to slow the craft down, countering the Sun's gravity. Without an engine to thrust against BepiColumbo's decent into the huge gravitational pull of the Sun, the mission would be doomed to overshoot Mercury and fall to a fiery end. This is where the ion engines come in.<br /><br />Ion engines have been used in space missions b</p></blockquote> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>