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White to Move and Mate in Two #368 - BepiColombo [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-06-20

The ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft made its 3rd close flyby of planet Mercury yesterday at 4:34 p.m. ET at an altitude of 236 km.

This was the 3rd of 6 gravity-assist flybys at Mercury. A flyby of earth and 2 flybys of Venus were completed in 2021-2022. The flybys, together with more than 15,000 hours-worth of solar electric propulsion, are needed to help the spacecraft overcome the Sun's gravitational force and lose enough energy for capture into Mercury’s orbit in 2025.

BepiColombo will deploy 2 separate orbiters around Mercury in Dec 2025 -

ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) will study the planet's surface and interior.

JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO, aka Mio) will study the planet's magnetic field.

Here are some fresh images from the flyby released today.

x A beautiful wide view of Mercury's varied terrain, with newly named Manley crater in honour of artist Edna Manley close to centre



🔗https://t.co/iMNWrSCeVS pic.twitter.com/CIhOHPMQKJ — BepiColombo (@BepiColombo) June 20, 2023

Manley is a crater newly named in honor of Jamaican artist Edna Manley (Feb 28, 1900 – Feb 2, 1987).

Most craters on Mercury are named after famous writers, artists and composers. According to the rules by IAU's Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature, all new craters must be named after an artist that was famous for more than 50 years, and dead for more than 3 years, before the date they are named. en.wikipedia.org/...

The BepiColombo mission is named after Prof. Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo (Oct 2, 1920 – Feb 20, 1984), mathematician, astronomer and engineer at the University of Padua, Italy. In 1965, Colombo proposed that Mercury's orbital and rotational periods were locked in a 3:2 resonance, not 1:1. His subsequent calculations showed how to get a spacecraft to Mercury using gravity assists by Venus and execute multiple flybys, an idea successfully employed with the NASA Mariner 10 probe launched in 1973.

Now let’s apply our mathematical acumen to solve today’s puzzle.

P.S. The “Mate in Two” puzzles are published on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. ET.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/20/2176385/-White-to-Move-and-Mate-in-Two-368-BepiColombo

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