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![]() by Staff Writers Paris (ESA) Aug 11, 2021
The joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission captured this view of Venus on 10 August 2021 as the spacecraft passed the planet for a gravity assist manoeuvre. The image was taken at 13:57:56 UTC by the Mercury Transfer Module's Monitoring Camera 3, when the spacecraft was 1573 km from Venus. Closest approach of 552 km took place shortly before, at 13:51:54 UTC. The cameras provide black-and-white snapshots in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution. The image has been lightly processed to enhance contrast and use the full dynamic range. A small amount of optical vignetting is seen in the bottom left of the image. The high-gain antenna of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and part of the body of the spacecraft are visible in front of Venus, at top left. The manoeuvre, the second at Venus and the third of nine flybys overall, helped steer the spacecraft on course for Mercury. During its seven-year cruise to the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System, BepiColombo makes one flyby at Earth, two at Venus and six at Mercury to brake against the gravitational pull of the Sun in order to enter orbit around Mercury. Its first Mercury flyby will take place 1-2 October 2021. BepiColombo, which comprises ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is scheduled to reach its target orbit around the smallest and innermost planet of the Solar System in 2025.
![]() ![]() New evidence of recent Venusian volcanism Tucson AZ (SPX) Aug 11, 2021 New data analysis techniques allow evidence of recent volcanism to be found in old Magellan spacecraft data. It is unclear if this activity is occurring today, or if it occurred within tens of million years, but geologically speaking, either case is recent. This adds to the growing body of evidence that volcanoes on Venus didn't go extinct as long ago as many had thought. This work was conducted by Planetary Science Institute (PSI) researchers Megan Russell and Catherine Johnson. In the 31 years s ... read more
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