{"id":13255,"date":"2024-09-09T05:02:53","date_gmt":"2024-09-08T23:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=13255"},"modified":"2025-04-02T02:54:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T21:24:12","slug":"what-is-bepicolombo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/what-is-bepicolombo\/","title":{"rendered":"What is BepiColombo?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About BepiColombo spacecraft:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a joint <strong>European Space Agency<\/strong> (ESA) and <strong>Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency<\/strong> (JAXA) mission to Mercury.<\/li>\n<li>The mission was named after Giuseppe &#8220;Bepi&#8221; Colombo, an Italian mathematician and engineer who made significant contributions to the understanding of Mercury&#8217;s orbit.<\/li>\n<li>It was launched on October 20, 2018 and it is an ambitious and complex mission designed to <strong>study Mercury&#8217;s surface<\/strong>, composition, magnetic field, and its interaction with the solar environment.<\/li>\n<li>The BepiColombo spacecraft consists of two main components:\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mercury Planetary Orbiter<\/strong> (MPO): The MPO is primarily provided by ESA and is responsible for mapping and studying Mercury&#8217;s surface, as well as its composition and topography.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter<\/strong> (MMO): The MMO is provided by JAXA and focuses on studying Mercury&#8217;s magnetic field and magnetosphere.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Objectives:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Investigating<\/strong> Mercury&#8217;s <strong>surface and composition<\/strong> to better understand its geological history and formation processes.<\/li>\n<li>Studying <strong>Mercury&#8217;s magnetic field<\/strong> and magnetosphere to gain insights into its internal structure and how it interacts with the solar wind.<\/li>\n<li>Measuring <strong>Mercury&#8217;s exosphere<\/strong> (a thin atmosphere) and understanding its composition and dynamics.<\/li>\n<li>Conducting experiments to test certain principles of general relativity and improve our understanding of gravity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1: What is the exosphere?<\/h3>\n<p>It is an atmosphere so thin that its few atoms or molecules are unlikely to collide with one another. In Earth&#8217;s atmosphere, the exosphere is the highest part of the atmosphere where the density of gas molecules is very low.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/explained-first-clear-images-mercury-9556396\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Explained: The significance of the first clear images of Mercury\u2019s South Pole<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The BepiColombo spacecraft is a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission to Mercury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}