Related topics: magnetic field · nasa · space weather · solar wind · spacecraft

BepiColombo: Two orbiters head to mercury

Known since antiquity, Mercury has not yet delivered all its secrets. The international mission BepiColombo, scheduled to launch in the coming days, will study the planet's surface and compare its magnetic field with that ...

SwRI's Strofio will measure Mercury's 'exosphere'

The European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft will launch towards Mercury carrying a unique payload designed and built at Southwest Research Institute: an instrument called Strofio, which will study Mercury's tenuous ...

BepiColombo monitoring camera test image

An unusual view of part of the BepiColombo spacecraft stack, taken by one of the monitoring cameras (or 'selfie-cams') fixed to the Mercury Transfer Module, MTM. The camera is looking up towards the solar array drive (top ...

Video: BepiColombo mission to Mercury

BepiColombo is scheduled for launch at 01:45 GMT (03:45 CEST) on 20 October on an Ariane 5 from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou.

Earth's magnetosphere

Enveloping our planet and protecting us from the fury of the Sun is a giant bubble of magnetism called the magnetosphere. It deflects most of the solar material sweeping towards us from our star at 1 million miles per hour ...

Taking a spin on plasma space tornadoes with NASA observations

Interplanetary space is hardly tranquil. High-energy charged particles from the Sun, as well as from beyond our solar system, constantly whizz by. These can damage satellites and endanger astronaut health—though, luckily ...

NASA investigates invisible magnetic bubbles in outer solar system

Space may seem empty, but it's actually a dynamic place populated with near-invisible matter, and dominated by forces, in particular those created by magnetic fields. Magnetospheres—the magnetic fields around most planets—exist ...

Topsy-turvy motion creates light switch effect at Uranus

More than 30 years after Voyager 2 sped past Uranus, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are using the spacecraft's data to learn more about the icy planet. Their new study suggests that Uranus' magnetosphere, the ...

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