First photos and videos of Double Venus Flyby

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Two spacecraft made historic flights to Venus last week, both sending back sci-fi-type views of the mysterious, cloud-covered planet.

The Solar Orbiter and BepiColombo spacecraft each used Venus in gravity within 33 hours of each other, capturing unique images and data during their encounters.

The Solar Orbiter, a joint European Space Agency and NASA mission to study the Sun, sailed past Venus on August 9 at a distance of 7,995 kilometers (4,967 miles). Then BepiColombo, a collaborative project between ESA and JAXA, blasted off to Mercury, just 552 km (343 miles) from the planet’s surface on August 10.

The above image was taken when BepiColumbo was 1.573 km from Venus.

Here’s a video of the Solar Orbiter demonstration, from a SoloHI photographer:

The camera spotted the night side of Venus in the days before the closest approach. SoloHI will be used to take pictures of the solar wind – the stream of charged particles constantly ejected from the sun – by capturing the light that electrons scatter in the wind. In the days before Venus’ flyby, the telescope captured views of the bright glow of the planet. The footage shows Venus moving across the field of view from the left, while the Sun is far from the camera at the top right. Scientists from the European Space Agency explained that the night side of the planet, the part hidden from the sun, appears as a dark semicircle surrounded by a crescent of bright light.

An animated gif of BepiColombo’s flight, with a series of 89 images taken by security cameras. Credit: ESA

Both planes helped the spacecraft reach their next destination. BepiColombo is scheduled to reach the innermost planet of the solar system in October 2025. The spacecraft needs a flyby of Earth and Venus and then several flights on Mercury itself, along with the spacecraft’s solar electric propulsion system, to help guide it into Mercury’s orbit against the colossal . pull the sun’s gravity.

BepiColombo actually consists of two connected orbits: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The planetary probe will map the planet in great detail, and the planetary probe will, of course, study its magnetosphere.

This video of the BepiColombo Venus flyby includes sonication of data recorded by the Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) aboard the Mercury Planetary Orbiter spacecraft. The accelerometer data was converted into a frequency to be audible to the human ear. The resulting sound is very interesting, as the sound reflects differences in spacecraft accelerations due to the effect of the planet’s gravity on the spacecraft’s structure, as well as effects from rapid changes in temperature, and a change in the speed of the reaction wheel as they work hard to compensate for these effects. The sound was matched to the timing of the shots seen in this movie, in the moments following the closest approach.

Solar Orbiter flyby video screenshot. Credit: ESA.

The Solar Orbiter will perform a near-Earth flight on November 27 this year, 460 kilometers (285 miles) before the other Venus slingshots tilt their tilt, helping the spacecraft get the correct position to get the first-ever views of the craft. The sun’s poles, an important part of the mission to help us understand the sun’s 11-year cycle of activity. The initial mission also begins in November. It will take the closest ever images of the Sun as it comes within 42 million km, and measure the composition of the solar wind.

You can read more details about the two flybys on the ESA website.

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