The BepiColombo mission, a joint European-Japanese project, has “recently completed the third of six planned Mercury flybys, taking dozens of images along the way,” it reported. there is Part-Time Job:
At its closest approach, the probe soared within just 250 miles of Mercury. However, this occurred on Earth’s night side, which was too dark for optimal imaging. Instead, the first closest image was taken 12 minutes after his closest approach, at a still impressive point of proximity about 1,100 miles from the surface.
ESA now stitches together 217 images from that flyby into a short video that ends with a zoomed-in close-up of Mercury’s cratered surface.And the music in that video reportedly had a bit of AI help. Phys.org:
The music for this sequence was composed by ILÄ (formerly Anil Sebastian) with the assistance of AI tools developed by the Machine Intelligence for Musical Audio group at the University of Sheffield.
Composed by Maison Mercury-Jones creative directors Ile and Ingmar Camaragaran, the music from the two previous fly-by films was given to the AI tool to suggest new song seeds, which Ile selected and edited, and other A new piece, interwoven with the elements.
A team at the University of Sheffield has developed Artificial Musical Intelligence (AMI), a large-scale general-purpose deep neural network that can be customized for individual musicians and use cases. The project with the University of Sheffield aims to explore the ethical boundaries of AI creativity while also highlighting the essential contributions of (human) composers.
From the ESA announcement:
BepiColombo’s next Mercury flyby will take place on September 5, 2024, but there is a lot of work to be done by the team before then… BepiColombo’s Mercury transport module will generate more than 15,000 hours of solar power propulsion over its lifetime We are planning to complete the operation. A total of 9 planetary flybys (1 on Earth, 2 on Venus and 6 on Mercury) will lead the rover into Mercury orbit.
The ESA-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the JAXA-led Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter module will be separated into complementary orbits around the planet, with major science missions scheduled to begin in early 2026.
One spaceflight blog points out that the propulsive energy required to finally enter Mercury’s orbit is “more than a mission flying near Pluto.”
“Only one other spacecraft has orbited Mercury, and that was NASA’s MESSENGER probe, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015.”
