Venus will receive two visitors from Earth next week
By David Szondy
August 03, 2021
Venus, often referred to as "Earth's twin", is set to receive two visitors this weekNASA/JPL-Caltech
Next week, two deep-space probes will make flybys of Venus within 30 hours of each other on their way to the inner reaches of the solar system. On August 9, the Solar Orbiter will pass by the planet often called "Earth's twin", followed by the BepiColombo Mercury orbiter on August 10.
Though it seems like it's all downhill, sending spacecraft to Mercury and Venus is just as energy consuming, if not more, as going to Mars and beyond. This is because, whereas trips to the outer solar system requires gaining speed, going to the inner solar system means losing speed. This means that a spacecraft heading closer to the Sun must either use massive rockets or find some other way of braking.
Since the 1970s, the world's space agencies have been perfecting the use of slingshot maneuvers for changing the velocity of spacecraft without the need for rockets. The first slingshot maneuvers were used on the Pioneer 11 mission, where the spacecraft used the gravitational pull of Jupiter to shoot it toward a flyby of Saturn.
For the inner system, these slingshot maneuvers are a bit more complicated, often requiring a number of flybys of more than one planet several times to reach the desired destination. In the case of the NASA/ESA Solar Orbiter, the purpose of next week's flyby is to sling the spacecraft out of the plane of the ecliptic, so it can get the first views of the poles of the Sun. Meanwhile, the flyby of Venus by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo, along with its solar electric propulsion system and six upcoming flybys of Mercury, will help it reach Mercury and go into a stable orbit around the planet.
More:
https://newatlas.com/space/venus-flyby-solar-orbiter-bepicolombo/
= new reply since forum marked as read
... the orbit around Mercury sounds like a better plan. Venus looks very orange maybe Crooked Donald would like to visit? They could slingshot him off on the way to Mercury!
They called ahead and that she's in the mood for visitors when they arrive. 
I don’t trust a government that can slingshot satellites around the planets in our solar system. What are they up to? Jewish space lasers pointing at the myPillow guy? 
