Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

Two different spacecraft will be swinging by Venus this week

Georgina Torbet
By
Artist impression of Solar Orbiter during its second flyby of the planet.
Artist impression of Solar Orbiter during its second flyby of the planet. The spacecraft will make numerous gravity assist flybys at Venus to bring it closer to the sun and to tilt its orbit in order to observe our star from different perspectives. ESA/ATG medialab

Mars might be the planet in our solar system that gets the most attention from visiting spacecraft, but this week, Venus will be entering the spotlight. The planet will host not one but two visitors as two different craft perform flybys to gain a gravitational boost on their way to other destinations. But the mission operators won’t let this chance to gather some extra information on Venus go to waste, so both craft will be collecting data as they go by.

The first visitor, due to perform its closest approach to Venus on Monday, August 9, is NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Solar Orbiter. This craft is designed to study the sun, but to get to its target, it is performing repeated flybys of Venus to bring it ever closer to the heart of the solar system.

Recommended Videos

The second visitor, arriving a day later on Tuesday, August 10, is ESA and Japanese space agency JAXA’s BepiColombo, which will be studying Mercury. It has already passed by Venus before and will make its second Venus flyby to power it on to its eventual destination.

Artist impression of BepiColombo flying by Venus on August 10.
Artist impression of BepiColombo flying by Venus on August 10. 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. ESA/ATG medialab

Unfortunately, neither spacecraft will be able to take high-resolution pictures of Venus as they go by because Solar Orbiter needs to remain facing the sun, and BepiColombo will be blocked by its transfer module. However, there will be the opportunity for some pics in 1024 x 1024 pixel resolution, as two of BepiColombo’s monitoring cameras will snap photos of the planet up close and as it moves away.

Related

Plus, Solar Orbiter will attempt to use its SoloHi imager, which is designed to take photos of the solar wind, to try and capture the nightside of Venus.

One serendipitous result of the near-simultaneous flybys is that there will be data available from two different sources in two different locations, which is rarely possible with Venus. Both craft will collect data on the magnetic and plasma environment of Venus, allowing researchers to get a more complete picture of the environment, along with data from the JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft currently in orbit there.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Venus’ volcanic activity has left it with a squishy outer shell
This illustration of the large Quetzalpetlatl Corona located in Venus’ southern hemisphere depicts active volcanism and a subduction zone, where the foreground crust plunges into the planet’s interior. A new study suggests coronae reveal locations where active geology is shaping Venus’ surface.

Venus might be our neighbor in the solar system, but there's a lot we still don't know about the planet. That's partly because of its high temperatures and atmospheric pressure which make it difficult to send probes there, and also because its thick atmosphere makes it difficult to observe from orbit. But researchers have recently dug through data from a decades-old NASA mission to learn about the strange geological processes which renew its surface.

One of the open questions about Venus is how it loses its heat, as, unlike Earth, Venus doesn't have tectonic plates. By looking at data from the Magellan mission, researchers discovered that the outer layer of Venus' surface, called the lithosphere, may be considerably thinner than previously thought and could let heat escape from the planet's hot core.

Read more
Two spacecraft worked together to learn about Venus’ magnetic field
Artist impression of BepiColombo flying by Venus on 10 August 2021. The spacecraft makes nine gravity assist maneouvres (one of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury) before entering orbit around the innermost planet of the Solar System.

When spacecraft launch to visit distant planets in the solar system, they rarely travel directly from Earth to their target. Because of the orbits of the planets and limitations on fuel, spacecraft often make use of other planets they pass by to get a gravity assist to help them on their way. And that means that spacecraft frequently perform flybys of planets that are not their main focus of study.

Researchers don't waste any opportunity to learn about other planets though, so spacecraft often take as manyreadings as they can when passing by. For example, both the BepiColumbo spacecraft, on its way to study Mercury, and the Solar Orbiter spacecraft, designed to study the sun, have made recent flybys of Venus. Now, researchers are combining data from both of these missions to learn more about Venus and its magnetic field.

Read more
See the ‘quiet’ of the sun’s corona in Solar Orbiter footage
The ESA-led Solar Orbiter mission has experienced its second close encounter with the Sun. It is delivering more stunning data, and at higher resolution than ever before.

Solar Orbiter, the European Space Agency (ESA) mission that launched in 2020 and which includes the closest camera to the sun, has made a second close approach of our star and has captured stunning footage of the sun's corona.

Solar Orbiter’s unprecedented view of the quiet corona

Read more