Why does it take 8 years to get to Mercury?! #shorts

By Dr. Becky

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Basically, sending stuff to Jupiter is like putting up hill in golf, and sending stuff to Mercury is like putting down hill in golf. If you’re not careful, the ball will pick up too much speed and fly past the hole. So when you send something to Mercury, you need a way to slow down the spacecraft, so that it doesn’t just fly past Mercury. You could just use fuel to slow down but that would require a lot of fuel, whereas planet fly-bys allow you to change the relative speed and direction of a spacecraft for free. So passing behind a planet in the direction of its orbit pulls the spacecraft forward, stealing a tiny bit of the planet's orbital energy to increase the spacecraft’s speed. Whereas, passing in front of a planet means the spacecraft is working against the planet's movement, and so it instead transfers a tiny bit of energy to the planet’s orbit which reduces the spacecraft’s speed. So the most efficient way to get to Mercury is through many planet fly-bys. After Bepi Colo