Uploads from Dr. Becky

Currently Playing: Why does it take 8 years to get to Mercury?! #shorts

Basically, sending stuff to Jupiter is like putting up hill in golf, and sending stuff to Mercury is like putting down hill in golf. If you’re not careful, the ball will pick up too much speed and fly past the hole. So when you send something to Mercury, you need a way to slow down the spacecraft, so that it doesn’t just fly past Mercury. You could just use fuel to slow down but that would require a lot of fuel, whereas planet fly-bys allow you to change the relative speed and direction of a spacecraft for free. So passing behind a planet in the direction of its orbit pulls the spacecraft forward, stealing a tiny bit of the planet's orbital energy to increase the spacecraft’s speed. Whereas, passing in front of a planet means the spacecraft is working against the planet's movement, and so it instead transfers a tiny bit of energy to the planet’s orbit which reduces the spacecraft’s speed. So the most efficient way to get to Mercury is through many planet fly-bys. After Bepi Colombo launched, it slowed down with one fly-by of Earth, two of Venus and six of Mercury. So the Bepi Colombo mission is a real feat of both engineering and orbital dynamics to make it possible for us to orbit Mercury so close. And it’s all in the name of science. Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV Video edited by Martino Gasparrini: martino.freelance@gmail.com Video produced by Marina Hui & Dr Becky Smethurst --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com