#BepiColombo is still cruising toward its final orbit around #Mercury.
It is a joint European Space Agency – ESA / Jaxa mission (with the strong contribution of Agenzia Spaziale Italiana), launched in 2018, designed to observe #Mercury through two probes: the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (#MMO) developed to measure magnetic fields, waves, particles and the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (#MPO) for remote sensing observations and radioscience.
The probe will reach Mercury in December 2025, after a journey of more than seven years and after six close encounters already carried out (the latest one on 19 June 2023). Others are planned on 5 September and 2 December 2024, finally on 9 January 2025 the two probes will be able to penetrate the #orbit of the Planet.
Bepi Colombo represents one of the most ambitious interplanetary exploration missions ever planned in which OHB Italia S.p.A. has given a very important contribution: it has been #PrimeContractor for the #SERENA payload in the frame of an ASI Contract. SERENA is a suite of four instruments (ELENA, STROFIO, MIPA and PICAM) aboard the European module MPO acting as a #detector of energetic charged and neutral #particles emitted from the Planet’s surface due to the impact of energetic ions from the #solarwind and the #magnetosphere. In particular OHB Italia was the developer of ELENA (Emitted Low Energy Neutral Atoms), a particle #analyser installed for the study of the #particleenvironment.
Science data gathering has been already taking place. Recently Bepi has revealed the presence of peculiar #electromagneticwaves around the Solar System’s innermost Planet: the #choruswaves. These emissions occur quite locally in the dawn sector of Mercury. They are known to play a key role in the mechanisms of #electronacceleration and loss through wave-particle interactions in planetary magnetospheres.
Mercury’s magnetic field is about 1% of that of Earth, and it was unclear whether chorus waves would be generated like on Earth. Before BepiColombo, chorus waves on Mercury had never been detected.
During two #flybys, BepiColombo dived only 200 km from the Planet’s surface. Observations from the plasma instruments on board have made it possible for the first time to simultaneously analyze different types of #chargedparticles from the solar wind closed to Mercury. According to the new study, many of these particles are propelled by ‘chorus waves’ detected for the first time in the Planet’s magnetosphere.
These waves could play a key role in the evolution of several #mysteriousphenomena, such as Mercury’s auroras.
www.ohb-italia.it
