Alex McColgan

speaker

29,301 appearances 104 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 21 Sep

Alex McColgan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 68 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 11.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Astrum Space · We Found Something on Mercury That No One Expected · 5 Sep 2026 podcast

But isn't Mercury basically the same as our moon? voice-verified

Why bother traveling so far to visit it three times if we have an analogue in our backyard? voice-verified

Well, despite being a rocky, heavily cratered mass, voice-verified

Mercury doesn't actually share too much at all with our moon, meaning it warrants its own studies. voice-verified

For starters, it is the only rocky planet besides Earth with a global magnetic field. voice-verified

And we still don't really know how it works. voice-verified

Studying it could help us understand not only our own magnetic field, but also possible magnetic fields on exoplanets in other star systems. voice-verified

One of Messenger's key findings was a much higher than expected abundance of volatile materials such as chlorine, sulfur, and potassium on Mercury's surface. voice-verified

The discovery that Mercury might be richer in volatiles than even Mars threw a spanner into our theories of solar system formation. voice-verified

Since solar winds are much stronger closer to the Sun, we expected these volatiles to be stripped away on Mercury, but to have survived on Mars. voice-verified

So why does the opposite appear to be true? voice-verified

What implications does that have about our theories of solar system formation? voice-verified

And how can those be corroborated or rejected by exoplanet findings? voice-verified

In order to get those answers, there was no way around it. voice-verified

We had to get back to Mercury. voice-verified

But as with many things, that is easier said than done. voice-verified

Mercury sits so deep in the Sun's gravitational sphere of influence that if you fired a spacecraft straight at it, the pull of the Sun would accelerate it until it was going far too fast to be captured by Mercury's relatively tiny gravitational pull. voice-verified

So in order for a spacecraft to successfully enter into orbit, you have to slow it down enough so that it matches Mercury's eighty eight day orbital period. voice-verified

To do that, Bepi Colombo has relied on nine flybys of Earth, Venus and Mercury to steer its course and slow it down enough to be able to enter orbit around the rocky planet. voice-verified

These flybys have also been incredible photo and measurement opportunities ahead of orbital insertion in November 2026. voice-verified

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