BepiColombo on its way to Mercury after successful launch

ESA’s first mission to the planet Mercury lifted off today from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. At 10:45 pm GFT (October 20, 01:45 GMT), the BepiColombo spacecraft rose on a tail of fire into the night atop an Ariane 5 booster on the start of a voyage that will take seven years and a total travel distance of 9 billion km (5.6 billion mi) to cover the 240 million km (149 million mi) between Earth and the closest planet to the Sun.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

BepiColombo on its way to Mercury after successful launch

ESA’s first mission to the planet Mercury lifted off today from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. At 10:45 pm GFT (October 20, 01:45 GMT), the BepiColombo spacecraft rose on a tail of fire into the night atop an Ariane 5 booster on the start of a voyage that will take seven years and a total travel distance of 9 billion km (5.6 billion mi) to cover the 240 million km (149 million mi) between Earth and the closest planet to the Sun.

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This bit is interesting.

“Because of the Sun’s massive gravitational pull, the energy needed to reach Mercury is equivalent to getting to Pluto. The Ariane 5 isn’t nearly powerful enough to achieve this by itself, nor are the onboard ion thrusters, but BepiColombo will reach the necessary speed by means of a series of slingshot maneuvers that involve a flyby of Earth in April 2020, two of Venus in October 2020 and August 2021, and six flybys of Mercury itself between 2021 and 2025, before the probe finally arrives in orbit on December 5, 2025.

Once BepiColombo is on station, it will split into two separate orbiters, ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).

See also:

http://sci.esa.int/bepicolombo/59928-science-with-bepicolombo/

interior and composition

What is Mercury like inside? Does the planet have a solid and a liquid core and what is the size of each?

What is Mercury composed of? Previous missions have not detected a high level of iron on the surface of the planet, although this is thought to be a major constituent of Mercury. How much iron is there within the planet, and why is the core still today partially liquid?

Mercury has an intrinsic magnetic field—unlike Venus, the Moon, and Mars—and associated magnetosphere. How is this magnetic field generated, and what is it like?

“Because of the Sun’s massive gravitational pull, the energy needed to reach Mercury is equivalent to getting to Pluto. The Ariane 5 isn’t nearly powerful enough to achieve this by itself, nor are the onboard ion thrusters, but BepiColombo will reach the necessary speed by means of a series of slingshot maneuvers that involve a flyby of Earth in April 2020, two of Venus in October 2020 and August 2021, and six flybys of Mercury itself between 2021 and 2025, before the probe finally arrives in orbit on December 5, 2025.

Is that so it avoids orbiting or crashing into the sun and the energy is used to insert it into a Mercury orbit.

Cymek said:

“Because of the Sun’s massive gravitational pull, the energy needed to reach Mercury is equivalent to getting to Pluto. The Ariane 5 isn’t nearly powerful enough to achieve this by itself, nor are the onboard ion thrusters, but BepiColombo will reach the necessary speed by means of a series of slingshot maneuvers that involve a flyby of Earth in April 2020, two of Venus in October 2020 and August 2021, and six flybys of Mercury itself between 2021 and 2025, before the probe finally arrives in orbit on December 5, 2025.

Is that so it avoids orbiting or crashing into the sun and the energy is used to insert it into a Mercury orbit.

There is a thing in orbital mechanics called Delta V, change in velocity. Each change in orbit has an associated delta V.

Crashing into the Sun isn’t the problem because it’s devilishly difficult to do. The problem is getting stuck in an Earthlike orbit around the Sun.

> the energy needed to reach Mercury is equivalent to getting to Pluto.

Don’t think so, matey.
Delta V to Venus is 2.5.
Delta V to Mars is 2.9. That’s from Earth escape velocity to low Mars orbit.
Delta V to Mercury is 7.5.
Delta V to Pluto is 11.6.

> Crashing into the Sun isn’t the problem because it’s devilishly difficult to do.

Wikipedia gives a way to do it.

Delta V to the Sun is 29.8.

But send the spacecraft out of the solar system, past Pluto, and then back in to the Sun allows it to crash into the Sun for a Delta V of only 12.3.