Mercury Lander
Our solar system’s innermost planet is also one of the least explored. NASA currently has the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury, sending back snapshots of its surface.
But in a few years, Mercury orbit may get a little more crowded. Due to launch in 2015, BepiColombo – a spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) – will fly two separate orbiters around the little planet, simultaneously mapping its surface and exploring its strange magnetic field.
The mission could have been even more exciting and achieved a valuable first: landing a probe on the surface of Mercury. A proposed lander would have used retrorockets to descend to a polar region, where permanent shade could have provided respite from the glaring sun. The probe would have deployed a mole to tunnel a few feet under the planet’s surface and a micro-rover that could have explored a small area away from the lander, perhaps stumbling upon the ice deposits thought to exist at the poles.
Unfortunately, budget cuts scaled back the ambitions of BepiColombo’s engineers. But getting to see pictures from the surface of our solar system’s smallest planet would have been one of the most exciting developments possible.
Images: 1) The BepiColombo spacecraft arriving at Mercury, where it will separate into two orbiters. ESA 2) The proposed BepiColombo lander, with mole and micro-rover. ESA