{"id":81642,"date":"2018-08-11T11:02:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-11T18:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/live-sneak-preview-of-this-years-mission-to-mercury"},"modified":"2018-08-11T11:02:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-11T18:02:24","slug":"live-sneak-preview-of-this-years-mission-to-mercury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/08\/live-sneak-preview-of-this-years-mission-to-mercury","title":{"rendered":"Live: sneak preview of this year\u2019s mission to Mercury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/live-sneak-preview-of-this-years-mission-to-mercury.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By New Scientist staff<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time to return to Mercury. The solar system\u2019s boiling-hot innermost planet will have a visitor soon \u2013 a probe called BepiColombo, which is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg23631575-200-2018-preview-mission-to-mercury-aims-to-solve-ice-mystery\/\">set to launch in October 2018<\/a>. After seven years of journeying through the inner solar system, the spacecraft will enter Mercury\u2019s orbit in 2025, and help to unravel the mysteries of this tiny, scorched planet.<\/p>\n<p>Mercury is a bit of an enigma. Despite being so close to the sun and reaching temperatures of 350\u00b0C, NASA\u2019s Messenger probe saw what looked like ice <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2087347-first-global-mercury-map-shows-its-hills-and-valleys-in-detail\/\">in the craters near the planet\u2019s poles<\/a> when it passed by in 2012. Messenger also found that Mercury has a tenuous atmosphere, even though it is blasted with intense radiation from the sun. And in 1974, NASA\u2019s Mariner 10 probe detected a magnetic field on Mercury \u2013 a surprising find, as Venus, Mars, and the moon don\u2019t have one.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2176422-new-scientist-live-sneak-preview-of-this-years-mission-to-mercury\/\">https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2176422-new-scientist-l...o-mercury\/<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By New Scientist staff It\u2019s time to return to Mercury. The solar system\u2019s boiling-hot innermost planet will have a visitor soon \u2013 a probe called BepiColombo, which is set to launch in October 2018. After seven years of journeying through the inner solar system, the spacecraft will enter Mercury\u2019s orbit in 2025, and help to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81642","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=81642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}