Flyby

The European Space Agency's (ESA) BepiColombo mission successfully completed its second flyby of Mercury, capturing 56 intricate images in the process, according to the agency. The joint project developed by the ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is tasked with examining the least explored planet in the inner solar system. During its closest approach to Mercury on June 23, the probe was around 200 km above the surface, capturing close-up images of the planet using its three onboard monitoring cameras.“We…

BepiColombo, a joint mission of European Space Agency's (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), successfully completed the second of its six encounters with Mercury -- about 200 km above the planet's surface.The spacecraft, which is on its way to the mysterious innermost planet of the solar system Mercury, aims to enter the planet's orbit in 2025.It made the second encounter with Mercury at 09:44 UTC (3:14 pm IST) on June 23, and just as the first one on October 1. It captured an amazing array of the planet's…

Artist impression of BepiColombo flying by Mercury. The spacecraft makes nine gravity assist maneuvers (one of Earth, two of Venus, and six of Mercury) before entering orbit around the innermost planet of the Solar System in 2025. Credit: ESA/ATG medialabThe ESA/<span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>JAXA</div><div class=glossaryItemBody>Formed in 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was born through the…

CHICO — The most popular movie in the country picked up some of its “need for speed” in Butte County. In 2019, Paramount Pictures reached out to Chief Operating Officer Alicia Rock at Northgate Aviation Chico Jet Center looking for people to work with and space for aircraft. Although she didn’t know it at the time, she would be helping in the production of the film “Top Gun: Maverick,” which stars Tom Cruise and continues the story of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell originated in 1986’s “Top Gun.” The film hit most theatres…

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has again completed a close flyby of the Sun in a bid to understand how our neighbouring star works. It was Parker's 11th close approach to the Sun and it came within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometres) of the nearly perfect ball of hot plasma. In comparison, the distance was about 14 times closer than Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. NASA said at that distance, the probe experienced temperatures exceeding 760 degrees Celsius. At its closest, Parker was moving with a speed of over…

NASA's Juno mission made its 39th close flyby of Jupiter recently and captured an incredible image of the planet's southern hemisphere. However, a closer look at the image also revealed two more heavenly bodies nearby — Jupiter's moons Io and Europa. Juno made the close fly in mid-January this year but NASA released the image last week. At the time this image was taken, Juno spacecraft was about 61,000km from Jupiter's cloud tops, at a latitude of about 52 degrees south. It sent the raw data to the ground-based control…