Mercury looks stunning in images from BepiColombo spacecraft's 6th and final flyby

[Admin]

BepiColombo made its sixth and final flyby of Mercury on Wed (Jan. 8) capturing images of the tiny planet hinting at the mysteries it will soon investigate.

Mercury looks stunning in images from BepiColombo spacecraft's 6th and final flyby : Read more

 

[Jim Franklin]

BepiColombo made its sixth and final flyby of Mercury on Wed (Jan. 8) capturing images of the tiny planet hinting at the mysteries it will soon investigate.

Mercury looks stunning in images from BepiColombo spacecraft's 6th and final flyby : Read more

Shame it doesn't include a lander too, droping something like Perseverance on the surface would give us so much more information.

 

[jean-luc suchail]

Mission was already quite a challenge with a spacecraft made of 4 parts, The the MTM (Mercury Transfer Module), the MTO (Mercury Orbiter), the Japanese Mercury Magnetic Orbiter (MMO) and the thermal shield (MOSIF), and the ionic propulsion. Adding a lander would have been too complex. Was already a big challenge for us to test the modules MMO and MTO with a sun illumination of 10 Solar Constants in the Large Space Simulator at ESTEC. We had to afdjust the collimation mirror, design a dedicated LN2 thermal shroud and use 3 sets of 19 Xenon lamps 25kW each to perform this, luckily none failed during the test.

 

[Jim Franklin]

Mission was already quite a challenge with a spacecraft made of 4 parts, The the MTM (Mercury Transfer Module), the MTO (Mercury Orbiter), the Japanese Mercury Magnetic Orbiter (MMO) and the thermal shield (MOSIF), and the ionic propulsion. Adding a lander would have been too complex. Was already a big challenge for us to test the modules MMO and MTO with a sun illumination of 10 Solar Constants in the Large Space Simulator at ESTEC. We had to afdjust the collimation mirror, design a dedicated LN2 thermal shroud and use 3 sets of 19 Xenon lamps 25kW each to perform this, luckily none failed during the test.

Where is your sens of adventure!!

Seriously, epic job, would I be right in concluding from your posts you were part of the development/operational team?

We still need to go back with a lander though.

 

[jean-luc suchail]

Hi Jim.
I was Test Facilities Engineer, not really part of the Project bur the Test Centre had to offer our "customers"all the best dedicated facilities.

Was really a challenge !
Impossible to insert a picture apparently.
Had a picture at the front of the LSS with the whole team (testing & project).

Jean-Luc

 

[COLGeek]

Hi Jim.
I was Test Facilities Engineer, not really part of the Project bur the Test Centre had to offer our "customers"all the best dedicated facilities.

Was really a challenge !
Impossible to insert a picture apparently.
Had a picture at the front of the LSS with the whole team (testing & project).

Jean-Luc

Upload pictures to a site like imgur.com and then post a link here.

 

[Jim Franklin]

Hi Jim.
I was Test Facilities Engineer, not really part of the Project bur the Test Centre had to offer our "customers"all the best dedicated facilities.

Was really a challenge !
Impossible to insert a picture apparently.
Had a picture at the front of the LSS with the whole team (testing & project).

Jean-Luc

Well, I thank you and your cleagues for your contribution to making this amazing project not only "fly", but also achieve a never before feat and advancing our knowledge and understanding of the enigmatic and very interesting little world that scorches under the glare of the Sun.

 

[George²]

This team?

 

[jean-luc suchail]

YES.
I was 2nd row from bottom, 3rd from left on the picture.
Thanks for the picture I as the same, for info, We also tested Rosetta with the lander, was a meter away from me !
We really had fantastic times testing these spacecrafts.

Jean-Luc

 

[jean-luc suchail]

Thanks a lot George !