2020/07/14 by A. Milillo, Anna Milillo, M. Fujimoto +126 · 128 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Aerospace engineering #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrobiology #Astronomy #Computer science #Engineering #Geology #Interplanetary spaceflight #Payload (computing) #Physics #Planetary Science and Exploration #Planetary science #Remote sensing #Scientific instrument #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar wind #Space environment #Spacecraft #astro-ph.EP #astro-ph.IM
paper · pdf · open access · doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00712-8
published in Space Science Reviews 216(5) (Springer Science+Business Media) · 78 pages, 14 figures, published
openalex publication_date 2020/07/14 · arxiv created 2022/02/26 · arxiv updated 2022/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 as their interactions with the solar wind, radiation, and interplanetary dust. Many scientific instruments onboard the two spacecraft will be completely, or partially devoted to study the near-space environment of Mercury as well as the complex processes that govern it. Many issues remain unsolved even after the MESSENGER mission that ended in 2015. The specific orbits of the two spacecraft, MPO and Mio, and the comprehensive scientific payload allow a wider range of scientific questions to be addressed than those that could be achieved by the individual instruments acting alone, or by previous missions. These joint observations are of key importance because many phenomena in Mercury's environment are highly temporally and spatially variable. Examples of possible coordinated observations are described in this article, analysing the required geometrical conditions, pointing, resolutions and operation timing of different BepiColombo instruments sensors.