Investigating Mercury’s Environment with the Two-Spacecraft BepiColombo Mission

• DOI: 10.1007/s11214-020-00712-8
• Publication Date: 2020-07-14T09:03:01Z
• Authors: A. Milillo; M. Fujimoto; G. Murakami; J. Benkhoff; J. Zender; S. Aizawa; M. Dósa; L. Griton; D. Heyner; G. Ho; S. M. Imber; X. Jia; T. Karlsson; R. M. Killen; M. Laurenza; S. T. Lindsay; S. McKenna-Lawlor; A. Mura; J. M. Raines; D. A. Rothery; N. André; W. Baumjohann; A. Berezhnoy; P. A. Bourdin; E. J. Bunce; F. Califano; J. Deca; S. de la Fuente; C. Dong; C. Grava; S. Fatemi; P. Henri; S. L. Ivanovski; B. V. Jackson; M. James; E. Kallio; Y. Kasaba; E. Kilpua; M. Kobayashi; B. Langlais; F. Leblanc; C. Lhotka; V. Mangano; A. Martindale; S. Massetti; A. Masters; M. Morooka; Y. Narita; J. S. Oliveira; D. Odstrcil; S. Orsini; M. G. Pelizzo; C. Plainaki; F. Plaschke; F. Sahraoui; K. Seki; J. A. Slavin; R. Vainio; P. Wurz; S. Barabash; C. M. Carr; D. Delcourt; K.-H. Glassmeier; M. Grande; M. Hirahara; J. Huovelin; O. Korablev; H. Kojima; H. Lichtenegger; S. Livi; A. Matsuoka; R. Moissl; M. Moncuquet; K. Muinonen; E. Quèmerais; Y. Saito; S. Yagitani; I. Yoshikawa; J.-E. Wahlund
• Keywords: Payload (computing); Planetary science; Scientific instrument; Space environment

The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission will provide simultaneous measurements from two spacecraft, offering an unprecedented opportunity to investigate magnetospheric and exospheric dynamics at Mercury as well their interactions with the solar wind, radiation, interplanetary dust. Many scientific instruments onboard spacecraft be completely, or partially devoted study near-space environment of complex processes that govern it. issues remain unsolved even after MESSENGER ended in 2015. specific orbits MPO Mio, comprehensive payload allow a wider range questions addressed than those could achieved by individual acting alone, previous missions. These joint observations are key importance because many phenomena Mercury's highly temporally spatially variable. Examples possible coordinated described this article, analysing required geometrical conditions, pointing, resolutions operation timing different sensors.