Solar Orbiter and Bepicolombo Get a Very Special Sendoff
There was only one way to make a double Venus flyby more epic. As we discussed last week on Uplink 56: Close Encounters of a Venus Kind, today sees two flybys of Venus. Early this (Monday) morning, ESA’s Solar Orbiter performed a gravity assist around Venus on its way to the sun, and tomorrow, BepiColombo will also use Venus’ gravitational field in a gravity-assist on its journey to Mercury. You can read all about it here.
When Joey Tempest of Europe caught wind of it, this happened. As anyone who knows 80s mega-hit The Final Countdown will know, the immortal line, ‘we’re headed to Venus,’ couldn’t be more appropriate to this epic feat of navigation, and he had this to say…