AbstractBepiColombo 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 spacecraft, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), will be studying the planet and its environment. They will be launched together on a single Soyuz-Fregat. The launch is foreseen for May 2012 with arrival in January 2017. Solar electric propulsion will be used for the journey to Mercury. The MMO provided by JAXA focuses on investigating the wave and particle environment of the planet from an eccentric orbit. The MPO, a three-axis-stabilized and nadir-pointing spacecraft in a low-eccentricity polar orbit, is dedicated to the characterization of Mercury. It will provide high accuracy measurements of the planet’s interior structure, a characterization of Mercury’s exosphere and a full coverage of the planet surface at high resolution, whereby surface morphology will be correlated to surface composition. 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. In November 2004, the BepiColombo scientific payload has been officially approved. The MPO payload comprises 11 instruments/instrument packages; the MMO payload consists of 5 instruments/instrument packages. Together, the scientific payload of both spacecraft will provide the detailed information 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. An overview is given of the status of BepiColombo will with special emphasis on the MPO.


    Zugriff

    Zugriff prüfen

    Verfügbarkeit in meiner Bibliothek prüfen

    Bestellung bei Subito €


    Exportieren, teilen und zitieren



    Titel :

    BepiColombo: Payload and mission updates


    Beteiligte:
    Schulz, Rita (Autor:in) / Benkhoff, Johannes (Autor:in)

    Erschienen in:

    Advances in Space Research ; 38 , 4 ; 572-577


    Erscheinungsdatum :

    2005-05-23


    Format / Umfang :

    6 pages




    Medientyp :

    Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)


    Format :

    Elektronische Ressource


    Sprache :

    Englisch




    BepiColombo: Payload and mission updates

    Schulz, Rita | Online Contents | 2006


    BepiColombo: Payload and mission updates

    Schulz, R. / Benkhoff, J. / COSPAR | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2006


    BepiColombo - Mission to Mercury

    Förstner, Roger / Best, Rainer / Steckling, Marc | AIAA | 2006


    Reflective Baffle for BepiColombo Mission

    Grond, E. R. / European Space Agency / Centre Nationale d'Etudes Spatiales | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2006


    BepiColombo -- Mission to Mercury

    Förstner, Roger | Online Contents | 2007