Rationale for BepiColombo Studies of Mercury’s Surface and Composition

David Rothery , Matteo Massironi , Giulia Alemanno , Océane Barraud (1) , Sebastien Besse , Nicolas Bott (1) , Rosario Brunetto (2) , Emma Bunce , Paul Byrne , Fabrizio Capaccioni , Maria Teresa Capria , Cristian Carli , Bernard Charlier , Thomas Cornet , Gabriele Cremonese , Mario D’amore , M. Cristina de Sanctis , Alain Doressoundiram (1) , Luigi Ferranti , Gianrico Filacchione , Valentina Galluzzi , Lorenza Giacomini , Manuel Grande , Laura Guzzetta , Jörn Helbert , Daniel Heyner , Harald Hiesinger , Hauke Hussmann , Ryuku Hyodo , Tomas Kohout , Alexander Kozyrev , Maxim Litvak , Alice Lucchetti , Alexey Malakhov , Christopher Malliband , Paolo Mancinelli , Julia Martikainen , Adrian Martindale , Alessandro Maturilli , Anna Milillo , Igor Mitrofanov , Maxim Mokrousov , Andreas Morlok , Karri Muinonen , Olivier Namur , Alan Owens , Larry Nittler , Joana Oliveira , Pasquale Palumbo , Maurizio Pajola , David Pegg , Antti Penttilä , Romolo Politi , Francesco Quarati , Cristina Re , Anton Sanin , Rita Schulz , Claudia Stangarone , Aleksandra Stojic , Vladislav Tretiyakov , Timo Väisänen , Indhu Varatharajan , Iris Weber , Jack Wright , Peter Wurz , Francesca Zambon

1 Observatoire de Paris
2 IAS - Institut d'astrophysique spatiale

BepiColombo has a larger and in many ways more capable suite of instruments relevant for determination of the topographic, physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of Mercury's surface than the suite carried by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft. Moreover, BepiColombo's data rate is substantially higher. This equips it to confirm, elaborate upon, and go beyond many of MESSENGER's remarkable achievements. Furthermore, the geometry of BepiColombo's orbital science campaign, beginning in 2026, will enable it to make uniformly resolved observations of both northern and southern hemispheres. This will offer more detailed and complete imaging and topographic mapping, element mapping with better sensitivity and improved spatial resolution, and totally new mineralogical mapping.

Mots clés: BepiColombo; Mercury; Volatiles; Crust; Tectonism; Volcanism

Domaines: Planétologie

David Rothery, Matteo Massironi, Giulia Alemanno, Océane Barraud, Sebastien Besse, et al.. Rationale for BepiColombo Studies of Mercury’s Surface and Composition. Space Science Reviews, 2020, 216 (4), ⟨10.1007/s11214-020-00694-7⟩. ⟨hal-03090330⟩