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Gravity, Geodesy and Fundamental Physics with BepiColombo's MORE Investigation
Longo, F.; Klioner, S.; Fienga, A. +37 more
The Mercury Orbiter Radio Science Experiment (MORE) of the ESA mission BepiColombo will provide an accurate estimation of Mercury's gravity field and rotational state, improved tests of general relativity, and a novel deep space navigation system. The key experimental setup entails a highly stable, multi-frequency radio link in X and Ka band, enab…
Shock Induced Strong Substorms and Super Substorms: Preconditions and Associated Oxygen Ion Dynamics
Zong, Q. -G.; Fu, S. -Y.; Yue, C.
It is well known that the interaction between interplanetary (IP) shocks and the Earth's magnetosphere would generate/excite various types of geomagnetic phenomena. Progresses have been made on the Earth's magnetospheric response to solar wind forcing in recent years in the aspects associated with magnetospheric substorms. Strong substorms and sup…
SERENA: Particle Instrument Suite for Determining the Sun-Mercury Interaction from BepiColombo
Kallio, E.; Schmidt, W.; Barabash, S. +118 more
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury will provide simultaneous measurements from two spacecraft, offering an unprecedented opportunity to investigate magnetospheric and exospheric particle dynamics at Mercury as well as their interactions with solar wind, solar radiation, and interplanetary dust. The particle instrument suite SERENA (Search…
BepiColombo Science Investigations During Cruise and Flybys at the Earth, Venus and Mercury
Fränz, Markus; Barabash, Stas; Krüger, Harald +59 more
The dual spacecraft mission BepiColombo is the first joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to explore the planet Mercury. BepiColombo was launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on October 20th, 2018, in its packed configuration including two spacecraft, a transfer module, and a sun…
Current Sheets, Plasmoids and Flux Ropes in the Heliosphere. Part II: Theoretical Aspects
Malova, H. V.; Zelenyi, L. M.; Bruno, R. +13 more
Our understanding of processes occurring in the heliosphere historically began with reduced dimensionality - one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) sketches and models, which aimed to illustrate views on large-scale structures in the solar wind. However, any reduced dimensionality vision of the heliosphere limits the possible interpretation…
Water Group Exospheres and Surface Interactions on the Moon, Mercury, and Ceres
Li, Shuai; Wöhler, Christian; Berezhnoy, Alexey A. +7 more
Water ice, abundant in the outer solar system, is volatile in the inner solar system. On the largest airless bodies of the inner solar system (Mercury, the Moon, Ceres), water can be an exospheric species but also occurs in its condensed form. Mercury hosts water ice deposits in permanently shadowed regions near its poles that act as cold traps. W…
Linking the Sun to the Heliosphere Using Composition Data and Modelling
Del Zanna, Giulio; Wimmer-Schweingruber, Robert F.; Lynch, Benjamin J. +13 more
Our understanding of the formation and evolution of the corona and the heliosphere is linked to our capability of properly interpret the data from remote sensing and in-situ observations. In this respect, being able to correctly connect in-situ observations with their source regions on the Sun is the key for solving this problem. In this work we a…
Sixty Years of Element Abundance Measurements in Solar Energetic Particles
Reames, Donald V.
Sixty years ago the first observation was published showing solar energetic particles (SEPs) with a sampling of chemical elements with atomic numbers 6 ≤Z ≤18 above 40 MeV amu−1. Thus began study of the direct products of dynamic physics in the solar corona. As we have progressed from 4-min sounding-rocket samples to continuous satellit…
The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter
Lara, L. M.; Oberst, J.; Thomas, N. +48 more
The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) is the first European laser altimeter constructed for interplanetary flight. BELA uses a 50 mJ pulsed Nd:YAG laser operating at 10 Hz with a 20 cm aperture receiver to perform the ranging. The instrument also uses a digital approach for range detection and pulse analysis. The ranging accuracy is expected to b…
Volatiles and Refractories in Surface-Bounded Exospheres in the Inner Solar System
Leblanc, François; Nishino, Masaki N.; Vervack, Ronald J. +11 more
Volatiles and refractories represent the two end-members in the volatility range of species in any surface-bounded exosphere. Volatiles include elements that do not interact strongly with the surface, such as neon (detected on the Moon) and helium (detected both on the Moon and at Mercury), but also argon, a noble gas (detected on the Moon) that s…