AstroBinAstroBin
Contains:  Other
Bepicolombo Earth flyby, Lucas Magalhães

Bepicolombo Earth flyby

Link: https://flic.kr/p/2iNPC2S
Bepicolombo Earth flyby, Lucas Magalhães

Bepicolombo Earth flyby

Link: https://flic.kr/p/2iNPC2S

Description

I had a new capture experience last night.

In this video we are watching the farewell of the BepiColombo spacecraft that is leaving for its study mission on the planet Mercury.

This spacecraft was launched in 2018 and was so far in the testing phase before definitively departing on its 7-year journey to its destination, the orbit of the planet Mercury, the closest to the Sun.

This mission is jointly ESA-JAXA (European Space Agency with the Japanese Agency). The spacecraft carries two scientific orbiters for the purpose of studying and collecting data for scientists here.

At dawn today, April 10, 2020, the spacecraft passed "very close" to Earth, only 12,700 km above, and this was the opportunity to capture images. In its moment of greatest brightness (reflection of sunlight) it reached magnitude +8.2, invisible to the naked eye but bright enough to be detected in the telescope.

In the video, the central point is the spaceship. The lines that pass are the stars. This type of monitoring shows a lot the object's displacement in relation to the background. The tracking was made manually.

I thank the friend here at Astrobin who corrected me about the flyby importance.

During its seven-year trip to Mercury, BepiColombo will use Venus' gravity twice and Mercury's six times to break the Sun's gravitational pull. Otherwise, BepiColombo would not be able to enter the correct orbit around Mercury.

#bepicolomboearthflyby

Comments

×

Warning!

This operation will reload the current page. If you have any unsaved information in a form, it will be lost.

You can also dismiss this window, and your operation will be applied at the next page navigation.