Mercury-4

What scientists want to do is try to understand the nature of the planet itself: we want to characterize the surface : what material is on the surface? We would like to measure temperatures; we would like to see the interaction with the solar wind: which is special on Mercury because Mercury is so close to the Sun. Then, Mercury has a magnetic field which is like Earth's a dynamo field : we would like to understand that! So there are several reasons to go to Mercury. In 2015, Europe should launch its own mission to Mercury. It carries the name Bepi Colombo, in honour of the Italian mathematician of this name. He studied Mercury; and it was his calculations which helped plot the course of the Mariner spacecraft. Bepi Colombo's first challenge is to successfully reach its destination and avoid the gravitational grasp of the Sun. The Sun has a lot of gravity and if you get in – out of our Earth orbit – and you go closer to the Sun, and you want to get to the Mercury orbit, you have to be very careful, and expend a lot of energy, to avoid falling in the Sun...