30 de octubre de 2014

Not yet another telemetry packet



At a first glance one may think that it is like any other telemetry packet from a spacecraft. A collection of bytes received exactly the 14th of October of 2014 at 16:37:06.995 which tell us, among many other things, that the main computer of the satellite is active while the backup one is off. One packet more of the millions of packets from BepiColombo that we will receive in our control system in the next decade.

But this packet is special. Even if its content says that the spacecraft is in the expected condition. Even if it has never been into space. It was, in fact, a very modest and short trip from the Netherlands to Germany for the first packet ever received from the real BepiColombo satellite, which is been assembled and tested in ground. A packet which marks the beginning of an incredible and amazing long journey through the inner Solar System that will take us to Mercury, one of the most mysterious planets where (almost) nobody has been before.