Interplanetary Missions: Mercury, Venus, Jupiter & Pluto

BepiColombo is an interplanetary mission to Mercury, the Sun’s closest neighbour. It consists of two spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). This will be the first ever journey to this mysterious planet, and it presents significant challenges. Mercury’s orbit is so close to the Sun that approaching the surface is a very difficult feat due to the extreme heat and gravity conditions. This mission is of high interest for scientists because it represents an opportunity to gain valuable insights into how planets are formed. The MPO will study the crust and internal composition of the planet, and the MMO will study Mercury's magnetosphere; the region of space around the planet in which charged particles are controlled by Mercury’s magnetic field.

Thales has provided 36 GHz Band Traveling Wave Tubes (TH4606C) and X band TWTs (TH4604C) for this mission which will be launched in January 2017.

 

Venus Express was the first space mission to Venus by the European Space Agency. The main objective was to observe the atmosphere and it’s dynamic over the long term in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the Venusian environment. The polar orbit was launched in November 2005, it arrived at Venus in April 2006 and in November 2014 the mission was concluded. The Venus express made maps of the surface temperature, analysed the surface characteristics and the Venusian clouds.

Thales provided Venus Express with X band TWTs (TH4704C) in the 60 watt power range to enable data transmission to Earth.
 

This mission was launched in May 1989 and sent into Venus’s orbit. Its primary objectives were to map the surface of Venus with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and to determine the topographic relief of the planet. At the completion of radar mapping 98% of the surface was imaged at resolutions better than 100 m, and many areas were imaged multiple times.
 
Thales is proud to have contributed to this project by providing X band TWTs (TH4604C) in the 20 watt power range which transmit data back to Earth.

 

Juno is a Jupiter exploration mission launched in August, 2011. The spacecraft is to play a vital role in gaining a better understanding of the origin and nature of giant extrasolar planets as well as the Solar System in general. This mission proposes to place the spacecraft in a polar orbit around Jupiter to determine the mass, size and composition of Jupiter's core, calculate the planet’s structural properties, its gravitational and magnetic fields, and its internal convection. Furthermore it seeks to explore and characterise the structure of Jupiter's polar magnetosphere, measure the atmospheric composition, particularly condensable-gas abundances such as water and anomia, the atmospheric temperature and wind profile.
 
The High Gain Antenna of the spacecraft supports X-Band communications with Earth for command uplink and science data & telemetry downlink and is equipped with Thales amplifiers (TH4604C) in the 20 watt power range.

 

New Horizons is a NASA mission launched in January 2006 to discover the formation of the Pluto system and the transformation of the early solar system. Very little is known about Pluto and scientists have long questioned its status as a planet. Prior to this mission, the Hubble telescope was the main source of images of Pluto's surface. These images depicted basic colours and seasonal variations but lacked key details needed to gain important insights into Pluto's environment. New Horizon’s primary objectives are to capture high-resolution images of Pluto and Charon, examine their geological make up, map their surface composition, characterise Pluto’s atmosphere and escape rate, and study its surface and atmosphere time variability. On the 14th July 2015, after a 9 and a half year journey covering 5 billion km, the space probe came within 12 500 km of Pluto’s surface and 28,800 km of Charon’s. This mission has revolutionized mankind’s knowledge of the solar system’s most evasive planet.

New Horizon’s downlink signal is amplified by Thales traveling-wave tube amplifiers (TH4604C) in the 10 watt power range which are mounted on the body under the dish. Thanks to Thales, even at such a long distance the radio signals from New Horizons take only 4.5 hours to travel between the probe and Earth.