The European Space Agency (ESA) has confirmed five new space science missions to explore Mercury, map the galaxy, build a solar orbiter, collaborate with NASA on a space telescope project and to study gravitational waves. Bepi Colombo, one of ESA's Cornerstone series of major science missions, is to be launched in 2009 on a mission to Mercury, under an agreement with Japan.
The craft will be powered by a solar-electric propulsion system and will have to endure heat 10 times more intense than the Earth is exposed to from the Sun, as it makes the first orbits of the solar system's innermost planet. Bepi Colombo will deploy a magnetosphere orbiter and a lander.
The 2,700kg (6,000lb) Gaia, also a Cornerstone mission, is expected to be launched in 2012 to study the composition, formation and evolution of the galaxy by high precision mapping of a billion stars. Gaia will be placed in orbit 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from Earth.
The ESA-NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna will comprise three spacecraft in solar orbit, 5 million km apart, forming a huge virtual antenna using interferometer techniques. Lasers will measure slight changes in the separation distances between the craft, to detect passing gravitational waves.
The third Cornerstone mission will be flown at the cost of a flexi-mission (a low-cost option where two missions can be flown for the price of one) as a result of the co-operation deal. As part of the associated shorter, flexi-mission series, ESA will provide instruments and equipment for the Next Generation Space Telescope, hoping to repeat its successful collaboration with NASA on the Hubble Space Telescope.
The solar orbiter flexi-mission will orbit as close as 30 million km to the Sun, travelling at a speed to enable it to appear to hover over one area of the Sun, giving unprecedented views of the solar surface and measurements of the corona and solar wind.
Meanwhile, ESA has placed the Eddington mission on a reserve list and will fly it should the telescope and interferometer schedules allow. Eddington will map stellar evolution and planetary systems by observing 700,000 stars for the presence of planetary systems.
Source: Flight International
