A few days after the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first image of its historic double flyby of Venus, the space agency now records the sounds made by the solar orbiter and the BepiColombo spacecraft as they traverse the mysterious planet. On August 9, the ESA-NASA Solar Orbiter flew over Venus at a distance of 7,995 kilometers, while the ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission passed only 552 kilometers from the surface of Venus a day later. These two spacecraft use Venus to launch to the center of the solar system. As the solar orbiter advances towards the sun, the BepiColombo spacecraft is heading to study the innermost planet of the solar system, Mercury, which is the expected place.
It will perform the first of six overflights on October 1 and 2, and then enter orbit in 2025. At the same time, the Solar Orbiter will perform a near-Earth flyby on November 27, “before Venus’s more slingshot tilts. Get a first view of the solar pole,” ESA said. During the gravity assist, the spacecraft recorded the sound of the mysterious twins of the Earth as they traveled to their destination. These sounds are produced by planetary gravity acting on the structure of the spacecraft and its response to rapid changes in temperature.
The Italian spring accelerometer (ISA) on the BepiColombo spacecraft records the acceleration measured by the spacecraft and then converts it to frequency to make it audible. ESA said that when the spacecraft flies at different distances beyond Venus, the accelerometer also feels the impact of the tide on the spacecraft. Other audio produced by simple sound waves captured low-frequency wind noise caused by the solar wind and its interaction with Venus. During the overflight, the BepiColombo spacecraft felt a lot of heat in its structure during its flight of about 552 kilometers.
The surface of the planet. As the spacecraft moves from the night side of the planet to the day side, the heat increases. The temperature of one of the eight solar panels of the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) has increased by 110 degrees Celsius. The temperature varies from -100 degrees Celsius to 10 degrees Celsius. Both spacecraft felt the huge gravitational force of the planets on their reaction wheels, which are used to maintain the attitude of the spacecraft and keep it on its course.
The spacecraft also experimented with the solar orbiter magnetometer team on the planet’s magnetic field, describing the sensation of magnitude spikes due to the compression of the magnetic field when they passed the planet’s flanks. Previously, the space agency released an image taken by the surveillance camera 3 of the Mercury transmission module, which captured a black and white snapshot of Venus at a resolution of 1024×1024 pixels. The solar orbiter did not click on any images of Venus because the scientific camera on the spacecraft had to face the sun.
