As planets go, Mercury is a world of extremes, and one that doesn’t always make much sense. Its iron core is absurdly and inexplicably large. Despite the harsh temperature, it has ice trapped in its poles. It also gets hit every day by wild solar storms, the likes of which Earth only experiences once a century.
Suzie Imber hopes to help us get to know the planet a little better through her work as a researcher in Europe and Japan. BepiColombo missionwhich last week made its final and closest flyby of Mercury, helping to slow it down before it enters orbit in 2026. Imber, an expert on space weather at the University of Leicester in the UK, says his studies of Mercury could help. They prepare us for the worst solar storms on Earth. Also, in 2017, he was the winner of the BBC Astronauts: Do you have what it takes?a gauntlet that challenged competitors to the rigors of space travel.
Imber said The New Scientist why there is so much excitement about sending a mission to Mercury, what we hope to learn about this interesting planet and whether it will one day venture to the final frontier.
Jonathan O’Callaghan: Why are we going back to Mercury now?
Suzie Imber: There are many reasons. From a high-level perspective, it’s a relatively unexplored planet. We’ve had three spacecraft and one orbital mission – NASA’s MESSENGER, which orbited between 2011 and 2015 – but the more we learn,…
