Giuseppe Colombo

Colombo studied the planet Mercury, and it was his calculations which showed how to get a spacecraft into a solar orbit which would encounter Mercury multiple times, using a gravity assist manoeuvre with Venus. Due to this idea, NASA was able to have the Mariner 10 accomplish three fly-bys of Mercury instead of one.{{cite web |url=https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Welcome_to_ESA/ESA_history/Giuseppe_Bepi_Colombo_Grandfather_of_the_fly-by |title=Giuseppe Bepi Colombo Grandfather of the fly-by |work=Welcome to ESA |accessdate=6 January 2019}} Mariner 10 was the first {{cite web|title=Mariner 10|url=http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Mariner_10&Display=ReadMore|date=30 November 2010|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140219012506/http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/profile.cfm?MCode=Mariner_10&Display=ReadMore |archive-date = 19 February 2014|url-status=dead|accessdate=6 January 2019}} spacecraft to use gravity assist. Since then, the technique has become common.

Colombo also explained the spin-orbit resonance in Mercury's orbit, showing that it rotates three times for every two orbits around the Sun.

Colombo also 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 invented the concept of tethers for tying satellites together.
• Colombo participated in the planning of Giotto, the European Space Agency's mission to Halley's Comet, but died before the spacecraft was launched. He produced the HAPPEN proposal involving using parts for a planned Geos-3 satellite to first examine the earth's Magnetotail before flying through the tail of Halley’s comet in march 1986. This was rejected by the Solar System working group for not offering to return enough information on Halley.{{cite book |last=Calder |first=Nigel |title=Giotto to the comets |publisher=Presswork |publication-place=London |date=1992 |isbn=0-9520115-0-6 |pages=31-32}}

• The Giuseppe Colombo Centre for Space Geodesy in Matera, Italy.
• ESA awards a 'Colombo fellowship' each year to a European scientist working in the field of astronautics

Several astronomical objects and spaceships are named after to honour him:

• The ESA-JAXA mission to Mercury, which launched at 1:45:28 UTC on 20 October 2018, is named BepiColombo.[http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/Pr_40_1999_p_EN.html ESA Press Release: ESA's Mercury mission named BepiColombo in honour of a space pioneer]
• The Colombo Gap in Saturn's rings.
• The asteroid 10387 Bepicolombo

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• [https://web.archive.org/web/20070501172214/http://cisas.unipd.it/Colombo_e.php Biography from the University of Padua]

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Category:Academic staff of the University of Padua

Category:1920 births

Category:1984 deaths

Category:20th-century Italian engineers

Category:20th-century Italian mathematicians

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