{"id":197264,"date":"2024-10-08T21:24:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-09T02:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/bepicolombo-spacecrafts-flyby-of-mercury-begins-unraveling-the-planets-magnetic-mystery"},"modified":"2024-10-08T21:24:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-09T02:24:00","slug":"bepicolombo-spacecrafts-flyby-of-mercury-begins-unraveling-the-planets-magnetic-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/bepicolombo-spacecrafts-flyby-of-mercury-begins-unraveling-the-planets-magnetic-mystery","title":{"rendered":"BepiColombo spacecraft\u2019s flyby of Mercury begins unraveling the planet\u2019s magnetic mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The team also studied the direct interaction between charged particles in the solar wind as well as plasma around Mercury and BepiColombo itself. This process is complicated by the fact that when the spacecraft is facing the sun<\/a>, it is heated and cooled, and heavier charged particles called ions can\u2019t be detected because BepiColombo becomes electrically charged and repels them.<\/p>\n

However, when BepiColombo slips into the shadow of Mercury, cool ions in a sea of plasma become detectable. This allowed BepiColombo to see ions of the elements oxygen, sodium and potassium around Mercury. The team thinks these particles originated from the surface of the tiny planet and were launched into space by meteorite strikes or solar wind bombardment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like we\u2019re suddenly seeing the surface composition \u2018exploded\u2019 in 3D through the planet\u2019s very thin atmosphere, known as its exosphere,\u201d MPPE instrument lead Dominique Delcourt, from the Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, said in the statement. \u201cIt\u2019s really exciting to start seeing the link between the planet\u2019s surface and the plasma environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The team also studied the direct interaction between charged particles in the solar wind as well as plasma around Mercury and BepiColombo itself. This process is complicated by the fact that when the spacecraft is facing the sun, it is heated and cooled, and heavier charged particles called ions can\u2019t be detected because BepiColombo becomes [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}