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Giuseppe Colombo (October 2,
1920 – February 20, 1984) was an Italian scientist,
mathematician and engineer. He is better known by his nickname
Bepi Colombo. He is known for his work on Mercury, inventing
tethers for linking satellites together and one one of the
initiators of ESA's mission to Halley's Comet.
ESA's BepiColombo Mercury mission is named in his honour.
Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo Biography
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 and in 1962 the Director of the
Institute of Applied Mechanics at the Faculty of Engineering at
the University of Padua. During his career he lectured on
Mechanical Vibrations and Celestial Mechanics, as well as Space
Vehicles and Rockets during his last years.
Planet
Mercury
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.
Tethered Satellites
Apart from his work on Mercury, Colombo invented the concept of
tethered satellites. In 1974, he introduced the idea of using of
a long tether to support a spacecraft from an orbiting platform.
Colombo and one of his colleagues, Mario Grossi, approached NASA
and the Italian Space Agency with the idea, which was eventually
developed into the Tethered Satellite System (TSS). The TSS was
launched in 1992 aboard the Space Shuttle mission STS-46, and
again in 1996 on STS-75.
Path of Giotto probe approaching Halley
As one of the initiators of
ESA's mission to Comet Halley, he suggested the name Giotto, but
he died in 1984 before that project was accomplished. At the
University of Padua, his work continues in the Centro
Interdipartimentale Studi ed Attività Spaziali ‘G. Colombo’ (CISAS).
To commemorate this great scientist, ESA created a 'Colombo
fellowship' in 1985, to be granted to European scientists
working in related astronautical fields. An asteroid discovered
by the Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy, asteroid
number 10387, was also named in his honour.
In addition to his work at the
University, he participated in research at the Harvard
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, then at Caltech and Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
Other Info
Colombo was a member of various advisory committees
and National and International Academies and was awarded NASA's
Gold Medal for Outstanding Scientific Achievement as well as
several other prizes.
He had an important role in promoting space research in the
Italian Space Agency (the Space Geodesy Center in Matera has his
name), industries and Universities (Padua, Pisa, Torino). Future
ESA's cornerstone mission to Mercury has been named BepiColombo
in honour of a space pioneer.
At the meeting in Naples (20-23
September 1999), the European Space Agency's Science Programme
Committee recognised the achievements of the late Giuseppe
Colombo of the University of Padua by adopting his name for the
Mercury project which was then under consideration. Almost
everything known until now about the planet Mercury comes from
three passes by NASA's 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.
Mercury Mission
BepiColombo, ESA's first mission to Mercury was named after Professor Colombo.
It is
one of ESA's science programme's 'Cornerstones'. In the course
of the comprehensive Horizon 2000 Plus review of the programme
in 1994, it was identified by Europe's space scientists as one
of the most challenging long-term planetary projects. At the
time Mercury was the least known of the inner planets. Its orbit
close to the Sun made it difficult to observe from a distance and hard to reach
by spaceflight. As a result, big questions raised by the Mariner
10 flybys of
the 1974/1975 remained
unanswered.
Saturn's Rings
Colombo made significant
contributions to the study of Saturn's rings, mostly using
ground-based observations in the era before space exploration
reached the outer solar system. Colombo Gap is named after
Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo.
Asteroid
10387
Asteroid 10387 Bepicolombo is also named
after
Giuseppe 'Bepi' Colombo.
10387 Bepicolombo (1996 UQ) is a main-belt asteroid discovered
on October 18, 1996 by P. Sicoli and F. Manca at Sormano.
Related Books and DVDs:
Books on
Planets,
Space Program and
Telescopes.
Astronomy DVd
Europe's Space
Programme: To Ariane and Beyond
by Brian Harvey
from
Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.ca
Did
you know?
* Colombo Gap lies in the inner C Ring. Within the
gap lies the bright but narrow Colombo Ringlet, centered at
77,883 kilometres from Saturn's center, which is slightly
elliptical rather than circular.
Giuseppe Colombo
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