Only one space mission so far was aimed to Mercury: Mariner 10 in 1974. Being located deep inside the potential well of the Sun, Mercury is an expensive target for orbiters, but it is widely recognized that science at Mercury is of great relevance to our understanding of the solar system history. A preliminary study of new, low cost, missions to the planet is presented. Significant opportunities are found, for the first decade of the next century, to put a spacecraft into an orbit in the 2:3 resonance with the one of Mercury, thus allowing complete coverage of its surface for remote sensing investigations. Although the cruise phases are not optimized, it is shown that the possibility of such a mission is within the reach of ESA.
Feasibility Study of Low-Cost Missions to Mercury
1991
5 pages
Report
Keine Angabe
Englisch
SMALL SATELLITE, LOW COST MISSIONS - A Feasibility Assessment of Small Italian Lunar Missions
Online Contents | 2000
|Missions to Mercury - 1973-1990
NTRS | 1970
|Ballistic mode Mercury orbiter missions
AIAA | 1973
|Ballistic mode Mercury orbiter missions.
NTRS | 1973
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