News from the Solar System: Von Berlin zum Merkur

In the organizer's words:

Small but mighty: with a diameter of just 4,881 kilometers (Earth: around 12,750 kilometers), Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, is the smallest of the eight planets in the solar system. It is also the least explored rocky planet: only two space probes have examined it up close. At the end of 2026, the European-Japanese mission BepiColombo will enter an orbit around Mercury and explore the planet intensively. In this issue of "News from the Solar System", we are looking at this fascinating celestial body with temperature differences of plus 430 to minus 170 degrees Celsius and have three DLR researchers as guests.

In addition to the scientists' presentations, we will also use the 360° projection and the starry sky of the Zeiss planetarium projector to embark on an interplanetary journey that no one has ever undertaken before.

There will be an opportunity for questions and discussion after the presentations.

The speakers are:

• Dr. Jörn Helbert from ESA will give an introduction on why Mercury is so interesting and how the BepiColombo mission will contribute to exploration
• Dr. Alessandro Maturilli talks about the spectrometer (MERTIS) we have on board BepiColombo and how important the laboratory work in Berlin is for it
• Kai Wickhusen discusses the challenges of building a laser altimeter for the BepiColombo mission from an engineering perspective

This issue of "News from the Solar System" is published in German and is a cooperation with DLR.

Price information:

Regular: € 10.00 Reduced: € 8.00 Daycare and school groups: € 5.00 (two accompanying persons receive Free admission)