Next Stop Mercury: BepiColombo's Ion Drive is the Most Powerful In Space... Ion drives!!!

[JHan]

Next stop Mercury. Soaring through the perils of space the BepiColombo is on a seven-year journey to one of Earth’s rocky neighbors, Mercury.

Though the spacecraft has not made contact with the planet yet, the BepiColombo is already making headlines for its technological developments towards its destination.

Ion Moves

Hitting a major milestone on its journey, on December 2nd of this year, the BepiColombo used its powerful ion thrusters to make its first important maneuver, a task that took countless years to perfect and get right. So why is this important?

The technology itself is relatively new, but as seen already, it has proven to have a host of benefits for spacecraft in the future. Ion thrusters can deliver one order of magnitude greater propellant efficient than your standard engines. Yet, ion thrusters can have very low accelerations compared to rockets.

On the Way to Mercury

Launched successfully this year on October 19, the BepiColombo has begun a series of 22 long burns that will reach its destination. Nevertheless, that journey is extremely long and encompasses a total distance of 5.6 billion miles or 9 billion kilometers.

Expected to reach there in 2025, the BepiColombo is Europe’s first mission to Mercury, an area that is one of the least explored places in the solar system.

As a joint mission with ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the mission comprises of two spacecraft and the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO).

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