Europe and Japan plan space mission

The European Space Agency is planning a joint mission with Japan that would be the first to land a probe on Mercury, a space official said today.

The mission entails three probes, two that would orbit and one that would land, to map the topography and study the origins of the closest planet to the sun.

Russian Soyuz rockets would launch the probes in space shots starting in 2010. The probes would reach Mercury about four years later, with one of them landing on the planet, and the other two orbiting and charting its surface for a year.

“This would be the first landing,” said Masahiko Sawabe of Japan’s education and science ministry.

“If successful we will collect a lot of new scientific knowledge.”

To escape the searing heat of Mercury’s rocky surface, where temperatures hit 467C (872F) in the day, the probe would land on the dark side of the planet during the Mercury night.

Temperatures plunge to minus 183C (minus 361F) then because of Mercury’s slow rotation around its axis, one day there lasts up to 176 Earth days.

Mercury has only been visited by one probe – the US-launched Mariner 10, which conducted three fly-bys from 1974 to 1975.

Nasa is planning to launch another orbiting probe, dubbed Messenger, sometime in 2004. It will reach Mercury in 2007.

Japan embarked on its first interplanetary exploration with the 1998 launching of its Nozomi, or Hope, probe to Mars.

It has been plagued by technical problems and made its final fly-by of the Earth just last week. It should reach the red planet by year’s end.

The goal of the mission is to study the planet’s surface and environment and try to unlock the mysteries of how the planet evolved.