Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission

Kobayashi, Masanori; Shibata, Hiromi; Nogami, K.; Fujii, Masayuki; Hasegawa, Susumu; Hirabayashi, Masatoshi; Hirai, Takayuki; Iwai, Takeo; Kimura, Hiroshi; Miyachi, T.; Nakamura, Maki; Ohashi, Hideo; Sasaki, Sho; Takechi, Seiji; Yano, Hajime; Krüger, Harald; Lohse, Ann-Kathrin; Srama, R.; Strub, Peter; Grün, E.

doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00775-7

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This is equivalent to the interstellar particles being at rest with respect to the Local Interstellar Cloud. Kobayashi et al (2020) performed simulations of interstellar dust with the model by Strub et al (2019), to predict impact speeds and fluxes of interstellar dust onto Mercury. The model simulates the dynamics of charged micrometer-and submicrometer-sized interstellar particles in the solar system which are exposed to solar gravity, solar radiation pressure, and a timevarying interplanetary magnetic field.…”

Section: Interstellar Dustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere

Krüger,

Thompson,

Kobayashi

et al. 2024

Planet. Sci. J.

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We provide an overview of our understanding of the dust environment at Mercury and the role that dust plays in shaping the planet's surface and exosphere. Our understanding of the role that dust impacts play in the generation of Mercury's atmosphere has evolved considerably with continued analysis of results from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission. Recent models have provided evidence for the probable release of refractory species into Mercury's exosphere via impacts. However, there remain significant questions regarding the relative contributions of atoms released via impacts versus other mechanisms (e.g., photon-stimulated desorption) to the overall exospheric budget. We also discuss the state of observational and modeling efforts to constrain the dust environment at Mercury, including sources from the zodiacal cloud, cometary trails, and interstellar dust. We describe the advancements that will be made in our characterization of dust at Mercury with BepiColombo, providing observational constraints on the dust clouds themselves and the role that impacts play in exospheric generation. On Mercury's surface, there remain outstanding questions regarding the role that dust impacts play in the regolith cycling and development. We review how improved modeling efforts to understand grain lifetimes as a function of impactor flux will further our understanding of Mercury's regolith. Finally, there are few constraints on the role of dust impacts on the space weathering of Mercury's surface, particularly the expected chemical, physical, and spectral alterations to the regolith. Here we discuss the importance of laboratory experiments to simulate these processes for the interpretation of data from MESSENGER and BepiColombo.

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Section: Interstellar Dustmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere

Krüger,

Thompson,

Kobayashi

et al. 2024

Planet. Sci. J.

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“…Additional observations of Mercury's dust ring would provide important new data required for more comprehensive modeling and model fitting. Currently, there are several space missions capable of detecting Mercury's dust ring: (a) the Parker Solar Probe has completed its first 10 close encounters with the Sun (Fox et al 2016), where each encounter passes through Mercury's orbit potentially giving an opportunity to observe Mercury's dust ring both from the outside and inside similarly to the all-sky observation of Venus's dust ring (Stenborg et al 2021a); (b) the Solar Orbiter mission (Müller et al 2020)-thanks to its unique, inclined orbit-might be able to observe Mercury's dust ring from a location away from the ecliptic and produce crucial data for characterization of Mercury's dust ring; and finally (c) BepiColombo will have a unique opportunity to detect Mercury's dust ring via remote sensing as well as in situ with the onboard dust detector Mercury Dust Detector (MDM) (Kobayashi et al 2020) when it approaches and orbits the planet.…”

Section: Potential Future Missions Observing Mercury's Dust Ringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mercury's Circumsolar Dust Ring as an Imprint of a Recent Impact

2023

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A circumsolar dust ring has been recently discovered close to the orbit of Mercury. There are currently no hypotheses for the origin of this ring in the literature, so we explore four different origin scenarios here: the dust originated from (1) the sporadic meteoroid complex that comprises the major portion of the Zodiacal Cloud, (2) recent asteroidal/cometary activity, (3) hypothetical dust-generating bodies locked in mean-motion resonances beyond Mercury, and (4) bodies co-orbiting with Mercury. We find that only scenario (4) reproduces the observed structure and location of Mercury’s dust ring. However, the lifetimes of Mercury’s co-orbitals (<20 Ma) preclude a primordial origin of the co-orbiting source population due to dynamical instabilities and meteoroid bombardment, demanding a recent event feeding the observed dust ring. We find that an impact on Mercury can eject debris into the co-orbital resonance. We estimate the ages of six candidate impacts that formed craters larger than 40 km in diameter using high-resolution spacecraft data from MESSENGER and find two craters with estimated surface ages younger than 50 Ma. We find that the amount of mass transported from Mercury’s surface into the co-orbital resonance from these two impacts is several orders of magnitude smaller than what is needed to explain the magnitude of Mercury’s ring inferred from remote sensing. Therefore we suggest that numerous younger, smaller impacts collectively contributed to the origin of the ring. We conclude that the recent impact hypothesis for the origin of Mercury’s dust ring is a viable scenario, whose validity can be constrained by future inner solar system missions.

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“…The average vaporization flux is thus (200 ± 16) × 10 −15 kg m −2 s −1 , with the flux mostly in smaller meteoroids with diameter less than 400 μm. BepiColombo does have a dust instrument (Nogami et al 2010;Kobayashi et al 2020) and will provide valuable observations. However, the importance and advantage of measurements taken by a landed instrument is that the incoming dust flux will be obtained simultaneously in both space and time with the other exospheric measurements, allowing for the establishment of correlations between dust and species release and thus a better understanding of the direct effects of MIV on the surfacecritical observations for understanding the nature of space weathering at Mercury in general.…”

Section: Dust Detector (Dd)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Science Goals and Mission Concept for a Landed Investigation of Mercury

et al. 2022

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Mercury holds valuable clues to the distribution of elements at the birth of the solar system and how planets form and evolve in close proximity to their host stars. This Mercury Lander mission concept returns in situ measurements that address fundamental science questions raised by the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission’s pioneering exploration of Mercury. Such measurements are needed to understand Mercury's unique mineralogy and geochemistry, characterize the proportionally massive core's structure, measure the planet's active and ancient magnetic fields at the surface, investigate the processes that alter the surface and produce the exosphere, and provide ground truth for remote data sets. The mission concept achieves one full Mercury year (∼88 Earth days) of surface operations with an 11-instrument, high-heritage payload delivered to a landing site within Mercury's widely distributed low-reflectance material, and it addresses science goals encompassing geochemistry, geophysics, the Mercury space environment, and geology. The spacecraft launches in 2035, and the four-stage flight system uses a solar electric propulsion cruise stage to reach Mercury in 2045. Landing is at dusk to meet thermal requirements, permitting ∼30 hr of sunlight for initial observations. The radioisotope-powered lander continues operations through the Mercury night. Direct-to-Earth communication is possible for the initial 3 weeks of landed operations, drops out for 6 weeks, and resumes for the final month. Thermal conditions exceed lander operating temperatures shortly after sunrise, ending operations. Approximately 11 GB of data are returned to Earth. The cost estimate demonstrates that a Mercury Lander mission is feasible and compelling as a New Frontiers–class mission.

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Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission

Cited by 17 publications

References 35 publications

Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere

Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere

Mercury's Circumsolar Dust Ring as an Imprint of a Recent Impact

Science Goals and Mission Concept for a Landed Investigation of Mercury

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