Giuseppe Colombo (space engineer)

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Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo (born October 2, 1920 in Padua , Italy ; † February 20, 1984 ibid) was an Italian engineer and mathematician .

Colombo grew up in his native city of Padua, where he attended elementary and high school. In 1944 he received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Pisa and returned to his hometown. There he worked as an assistant and as an associate professor in theoretical mechanics . In 1955 he received the full professorship in applied mechanics at the Faculty of Engineering. He taught vibration and celestial mechanics; in his final years he also taught spacecraft and rockets. He died of cancer at the age of 64.

He was also instrumental in the development of the concept of the Space Tether , a method that uses ropes on or between spacecraft in orbits around e.g. B. uses the earth to generate energy and / or change location.

Achievements and honors

In addition to many other prizes, he also received the NASA gold medal for outstanding scientific achievement. In 1971 he was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize . In 1983 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

At the Sormano Astronomical Observatory in Italy, the asteroid discovered there (10387) Bepicolombo was named in his honor.

In 1999 the European Space Agency (ESA) named the project for a Mercury probe after him, which it had just decided - BepiColombo, in special recognition of his achievements . Known by his nickname Bepi, the professor was instrumental in planning the first Mercury mission Mariner 10 during his time at the University of Padua . He suggested the trajectory on which it was the first probe ever to swing by Venus and then repeatedly passed through Mercury - three times in a functional state. Giuseppe "Bepi" Colombo also provided a prediction for the exact period of the peculiar rotation of the target planet on the basis of various observations. He was also one of the initiators of the Giotto mission to Comet Halley and had suggested the name for this probe.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ESA: Who was Giuseppe (Bepi) Colombo?
personal data
SURNAME Colombo, Giuseppe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Colombo, Bepi (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian engineer and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Padua , Italy
DATE OF DEATH 20th February 1984
Place of death Padua , Italy