amthsun: October 3 [posted on October 4] art and art in space*

This slide show of artists born on October 3 is from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s website, which artist shares your birthday?

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Early this morning, The Guardian published the first photographs of the Friday flyby of Mercury by the space craft BepiColumbo.

“The joint mission by the European agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency was launched in 2018, flying once past Earth and twice past Venus on its journey to the solar system’s smallest planet.

Five further flybys are needed before BepiColombo is sufficiently slowed down to release Esa’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and Jaxa’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. The two probes will study Mercury’s core and processes on its surface, as well as its magnetic sphere.”

Earth is the only other rocky planet orbiting our sun with a magnetic field. Earth’s is generated by a molten core; Mercury’s should be cooled solid by now, like Mars. Mercury has many secrets to be revealed by this mission.

Monday is the start of Global Space Week — the 2021 theme is “Women in Space.” In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian Cosmonaut, became the first woman in space. As of “March 2021, 65 women have flown in space, including cosmonauts, astronauts, payload specialists, and space station participants” from “Celebrating Women’s History Month” nasa.gov

for *art in space, check out earlier images of Mercury which have been “colourized.”