Pioneers and Innovators
Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo
(1920-1984)
Giuseppe Colombo was born in 1920 in
Padua, Italy, where he attended primary and secondary schools. After graduating
from the University of Pisa in Mathematics in 1944, he returned to Padua
where he worked as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Theoretical
Mechanics at the University of Padua. In 1955 he became Full Professor
of Applied Mechanics at the Faculty of Engineering. In 1970, he was
invited to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to participate in a conference
on NASA's Mariner 10 Venus/Mercury mission. Early in that year he had noted
that the period of the spacecraft's orbit, after it flew past Mercury,
would be very close to twice the rotational period of the planet itself.
He suggested that a second encounter with Mercury could be achieved. An
analytical study conducted by JPL confirmed Colombo's suggestion. The study
showed that by careful choice of the Mercury fly-by point, a gravitational-assist
manoeuvre could be made that would return the spacecraft to Mercury six
months later. Almost everything known until now about the planet Mercury
comes from these orbits of Mariner 10 in 1974-75, which were inspired by
Colombo's calculations. He suggested how to put that spacecraft into
an orbit that would bring it back repeatedly to Mercury. The Italian scientist
also explained, as an unsuspected resonance, Mercury's peculiar habit of
rotating three times in every two revolutions of the Sun.
To
date, Mariner 10 is the one and only spacecraft to visit Mercury.
On February 20, 1984, Giuseppe Colombo died in his home in Padua, Italy. Professor Colombo had made extraordinary contributions to space science and exploration. The essence of his work was inventing ideas - ideas that to others seemed fictional, but he proved them practical.
References:
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMJAF0P4HD_index_0.html
http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/headlines/2000/bepicolombo.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mercury-99d.html