#bepicolombo

#bepicolombo

Hear Mercury for the First Time: ESA BepiColombo's First Sound from the Planetary FlybyThe ESA's BepiColombo spacecraft did a successful Mercury flyby earlier this October. During its flyby, the spacecraft not only captured some stunning photos of the planet's surface. It also captured some audio from the journey. Engineers from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have transformed this audio data from the spacecraft into a sonification, and now we can hear it with our own ears.It is clarified, however, that these sounds are not acoustic waves. In reality, they are spacecraft vibrations captured by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), one of the satellites that comprise the BepiColombo spacecraft.Still, it's really cool!(Image Credit: Europlanet via Twitter)#Astronomy #Space #ESA #JAXA #Mercury #BepiColombo #Sonification

BepiColombo's First Pictures of MercuryBepiColombo has successfully pulled off a flawless flyby to Mercury recently, and it was able to take some pictures of the planet. Unfortunately, the spacecraft arrived on the planet's night side, and so the closest image was from a distance of about 1000km. However, the pictures were detailed enough to capture the impact craters on the Mercury's surface.Valentina Galluzzi, the co-investigator of BepiColombo’s SIMBIO-SYS imaging system, was excited to meet Mercury finally, after years of studying the planet.Here are the photos captured by the spacecraft. See the captions of each image over at The European Space Agency (ESA).(All Images: ESA)#Astronomy #Flyby #ESA #BepiColombo