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Joint mission to probe Mercury

Tokyo: Japan is planning a joint mission with the European Space Agency that would be the first to land a probe on Mercury, a space official said on Wednesday. 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 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 Sawbe 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 467 degrees Celsius in the day, the probe would land on the dark side of the planet during the Mercury night. Temperatures plunge to minus 183 degrees Celsius then. Because of Mercury's slow rotation around its axis, one day there lasts up to 176 earth days. — AP

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