Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
BEPICOLOMBO — MPO SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS
AND SYSTEM UPDATE
JOHANNES BENKHOFF
∗
and RITA SCHULZ
ESA Research and Scientific Support Department, ESTEC
Postbox 299, NL-2200 AG Noordwijk zh, The Netherlands
∗
johannes.benkhoff@esa.int
The BepiColombo is an interdisciplinary mission to explore the planet Mercury
through a partnership between ESA and Japan's Aerospace Exploration
Agency (JAXA). From their dedicated orbits two spacecrafts, the Mercury
Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO),
will be studying the planet and its environment. Both orbiter will be launched
together on a single Soyuz-Fregat. The launch is foreseen for August 2013
with arrival in late summer 2019. Solar electric propulsion will be used for the
journey to Mercury. The BepiColombo scientific payload has been selected in
2004. The MPO payload comprises eleven instruments/instrument packages;
the MMO payload consists of five instruments/instrument packages. Together,
both spacecraft and their scientific payload will provide the detailed informa-
tion necessary to understand Mercury and its magnetospheric environment and
to find clues to the origin and evolution of a planet close to its parent star. The
MPO will focus on a global characterization of Mercury through the inves-
tigation of its interior, surface, exosphere, and magnetosphere. In addition,
it will be testing Einstein's theory of general relativity. Major effort was put
into optimizing the scientific return by defining the payload complement such
that individual measurements can be interrelated and complement each other.
A detailed overview of the status of BepiColombo will be given with special
emphasis on the MPO and its payload complement.
1. Introduction
Mercury still is the least known planet in the inner solar system and its
precise characterization is long overdue. Being the planet closest to the sun
it represents the inner end-member of the four terrestrial planets. As such
it plays a fundamental role in constraining and testing the competing the-
ories explaining dynamical and compositional aspects of the formation and
evolution of the whole group. However, only a space mission can provide
the necessary details of its properties. From the Earth, Mercury's maximum
∗
Corresponding author.
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