Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
BepiColombo braces for third Mercury flyby
-
Similar Topics
-
By European Space Agency
To mark its third year of highly productive science, astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to scratch beyond the surface of the Cat’s Paw Nebula (NGC 6334), a massive, local star-forming region.
View the full article
-
By NASA
Credit: NASA/Krystofer Kim Lee esta nota en español aquí.
NASA released the first episode Tuesday of its third season of Universo curioso de la NASA, the agency’s only Spanish-language podcast.
Episodes focus on some of NASA’s top missions and research topics for 2025, bringing the wonder of exploration, space technology, and scientific discoveries to Spanish-speaking audiences around the world.
“NASA Science is literally everywhere, transcending geography and language to provide real time benefits to everyday lives across the globe using our scientific innovations, data, and discoveries from the unique vantage point of space,” said Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The Universo curioso de la NASA podcast shares NASA’s discoveries with Spanish-speaking communities across the globe, inspiring future explorers to join our journey as we return to the Moon and venture onward to Mars for the benefit of all humanity.”
New episodes will post every month through the end of the year. The first episode, centered on the science objectives of NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon, is available at:
https://go.nasa.gov/4l9lmbN
Universo curioso is hosted by Noelia González, communications specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This season introduces co-host Andrés Almeida, technical writer and host of NASA’s Small Steps, Giant Leaps podcast at NASA’s Headquarters. Throughout the season, listeners will celebrate the legacy of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, learn about an upcoming mission to the Sun, and explore dark energy and how the future Roman Space Telescope will study it, among other topics.
Universo curioso de la NASA is a joint initiative of the agency’s Spanish-language communications and audio programs. The new season, as well as previous episodes, are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud and NASA’s website.
Listen to the podcast and download related art materials at:
https://ciencia.nasa.gov/universocurioso
Share
Details
Last Updated Jul 01, 2025 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Podcasts General View the full article
-
By NASA
Credit: NASA NASA continues to collaborate with global communities to solve complex challenges through crowdsourcing with a series of 25 new NASA Open Innovation Service (NOIS) contracts managed by the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The contract aims to empower NASA’s workforce by actively engaging the public to find creative solutions to difficult space exploration challenges through rapid experimentation with new methodologies, new technologies, and unique perspectives, ensuring NASA remains at the forefront of innovation while accomplishing its missions.
This is the third NOIS contract, managed by NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), and used by NASA and other government agencies. The NOIS3 contract will provide solutions through multiple crowdsourcing tools and methodologies, which include public prize competitions, freelance tasking, technology searches, and other crowd-based methods.
The total value of the NOIS3 contract is $475 million over 10 years. There is a guaranteed $500 minimum obligation for each contract award. The base contract spans June 5, 2025, through May 31, 2027, and there are two options, the first for three years, and the second for five years. If all options are exercised, work could continue through May 31, 2035.
The awardees are:
Blue Clarity, Vienna, Virginia Capital Consulting Corp., Fairfax, Virginia Challenge Works, London, United Kingdom CrowdPlat Inc., Pleasanton, California Design Interactive Inc., Orlando, Florida DrivenData Inc., Denver Ensemble Government Services, Hyattsville, Maryland Hyperion Technologies, Arlington, Virginia Floor23 Digital, Jackson, Wisconsin Freelancer International, Sydney, Australia HeroX, Wilmington, Delaware HYVE Innovate, Munchen, Germany Innoget, Rockville, Maryland Institute of Competition Sciences, San Francisco Loyal Source Government Services, Orlando, Florida Luminary Labs, New York City National Institute of Aerospace Associates, Hampton, Virginia Randstad Federal, Duluth, Georgia Rios Partners, Arlington, Virginia SecondMuse, Bernalillo, New Mexico TechConnect, Summerville, South Carolina Toffler Associates, Arlington, Virginia Tongal Inc., Los Angeles Topcocder, Indianapolis yet2.com Inc., Waltham, Massachusetts NASA’s CoECI provides guidance on open innovation initiatives, helping define challenges and requirements and formulating and evaluating potential solutions. The center’s end-to-end service allows NASA and other federal agencies to rapidly experiment with new methods and solve critical problems through innovation and collaboration.
Learn more about the NASA Center of Excellence at:
https://www.nasa.gov/coeci
-end-
Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov
Kelly Humphries
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
kelly.o.humphries@nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated Jun 05, 2025 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) Johnson Space Center Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing Program Space Technology Mission Directorate View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:20 Listen to the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft as it flew past Mercury on 8 January 2025. This sixth and final flyby used the little planet's gravity to steer the spacecraft on course for entering orbit around Mercury in 2026.
What you can hear in the sonification soundtrack of this video are real spacecraft vibrations measured by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument. The accelerometer data have been shifted in frequency to make them audible to human ears – one hour of measurements have been sped up to one minute of sound.
BepiColombo is always shaking ever so slightly: fuel is slightly sloshing, the solar panels are vibrating at their natural frequency, heat pipes are pushing vapour through small tubes, and so forth. This creates the eerie underlying hum throughout the video.
But as BepiColombo gets closer to Mercury, ISA detects other forces acting on the spacecraft. Most scientifically interesting are the audible shocks that sound like short, soft bongs. These are caused by the spacecraft responding to entering and exiting Mercury's shadow, where the Sun's intense radiation is suddenly blocked. One of ISA's scientific goals is to monitor the changes in the ‘solar radiation pressure’ – a force caused by sunlight striking BepiColombo as it orbits the Sun and, eventually, Mercury.
The loudest noises – an ominous ‘rumbling’ – are caused by the spacecraft's large solar panels rotating. The first rotation occurs in shadow at 00:17 in the video, while the second adjustment at 00:51 was also captured by one of the spacecraft’s monitoring cameras.
Faint sounds like wind being picked up in a phone call, which grow more audible around 30 seconds into the video, are caused by Mercury's gravitational field pulling the nearest and furthest parts of the spacecraft by different amounts. As the planet's gravity stretches the spacecraft ever so slightly, the spacecraft responds structurally. At the same time, the onboard reaction wheels change their speed to maintain the spacecraft's orientation, which you can hear as a frequency shift in the background.
This is the last time that many of these effects can be measured with BepiColombo's largest solar panels, which make the spacecraft more susceptible to vibrations. The spacecraft module carrying these panels will not enter orbit around Mercury with the mission's two orbiter spacecraft.
The video shows an accurate simulation of the spacecraft and its route past Mercury during the flyby, made with the SPICE-enhanced Cosmographia spacecraft visualisation tool. The inset that appears 38 seconds into the video shows real photographs taken by one of BepiColombo's monitoring cameras.
Read more about BepiColombo's sixth Mercury flyby
Access the related broadcast quality video material.
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:36 Fly over Mercury with BepiColombo for the final time during the mission’s epic expedition around the Sun. The ESA/JAXA spacecraft captured these images of the Solar System's smallest planet on 7 and 8 January 2025, before and during its sixth encounter with Mercury. This was its final planetary flyby until it enters orbit around the planet in late 2026.
The video begins with BepiColombo's approach to Mercury, showing images taken by onboard monitoring cameras 1 and 2 (M-CAM 1 and M-CAM 2) between 16:59 CET on 7 January and 01:45 CET on 8 January. During this time, the spacecraft moved from 106 019 to 42 513 km from Mercury's surface. The view from M-CAM 1 is along a 15-metre-long solar array, whereas M-CAM 2 images show an antenna and boom in the foreground.
After emerging into view from behind the solar array, Mercury appears to jump to the right. Both the spacecraft and its solar arrays rotated in preparation for passing through Mercury's cold, dark shadow.
For several hours after these first images were taken, the part of Mercury’s surface illuminated by the Sun was no longer visible from the M-CAMs. BepiColombo's closest approach to Mercury took place in darkness at 06:58:52 CET on 8 January, when it got as close as 295 km.
Shortly after re-emerging into the intense sunlight, the spacecraft peered down onto the planet's north pole, imaging several craters whose floors are in permanent shadow. The long shadows in this region are particularly striking on the floor of Prokofiev crater (the largest crater to the right of centre) – the central peak of that crater casts spiky shadows that exaggerate the shape of this mountain.
Next, we have a beautiful view of Mercury crossing the field of view from left to right, seen first by M-CAM 1 then by M-CAM 2 between 07:06 and 07:49 CET. These images showcase the planet's northern plains, which were smoothed over billions of years ago when massive amounts of runny lava flowed across Mercury's cratered surface.
The background music is The Hebrides overture, composed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1830 after being inspired by a visit to Fingal’s Cave, a sea cave created by ancient lava flows on the island of Staffa, Scotland. Similarly shaped by lava is Mercury's Mendelssohn crater, one of the large craters visible passing from left to right above the solar array in M-CAM 1's views, and at the very bottom of M-CAM 2's views. The Mendelssohn crater was flooded with lava after an impact originally created it.
The end of the video lingers on the final three close-up images that the M-CAMs will ever obtain of Mercury. The cameras will continue to operate until September 2026, fulfilling their role of monitoring various parts of the spacecraft. After that point, the spacecraft module carrying the M-CAMs will separate from BepiColombo's other two parts, ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio). MPO’s much more powerful science cameras will take over from the M-CAMs, mapping Mercury over a range of colours in visible and infrared light.
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.