The MESSENGER mission to Mercury: spacecraft and mission design

Santo, A.; Gold, R. E.; McNutt, R. L.; Solomon, Sean C.; Ercol, Carl J.; Farquhar, Robert W.; Hartka, Theodore J.; Jenkins, J.; McAdams, James; Mosher, Larry; Persons, David F.; Artis, David; Bokulic, R.S.; Conde, R.F.; Dakermanji, G.; Goss, Milton E; Haley, David; Heeres, K. J.; Maurer, R. H.; Moore, R. C.; Rodberg, Elliot H.; Stern, Theodore; Wiley, Samuel R.; Williams, Bobby G.; Yen, Chen‐Wan L.; Peterson, Max R.

doi:10.1016/s0032-0633(01)00087-3

Cited by 97 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…MESSENGER (Santo et al, 2001;Solomon et al, 2001Solomon et al, , 2007 has so far executed three flybys of the planet Mercury, in January and October 2008 and September 2009. During flyby 1, MLA (Cavanaugh et al, 2007) ranged to Mercury's surface and acquired 3617 measurements along a 3200-km-long topographic profile in the equatorial region of the planet (Zuber et al, 2008a;Smith et al, 2010), mostly within the hemisphere of Mercury not imaged by Mariner 10.…”

Section: Observations Of Contractional Tectonic Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accommodation of lithospheric shortening on Mercury from altimetric profiles of ridges and lobate scarps measured during MESSENGER flybys 1 and 2

Zuber¹,

Montési

Farmer³

et al. 2010

Icarus

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Section: Observations Of Contractional Tectonic Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accommodation of lithospheric shortening on Mercury from altimetric profiles of ridges and lobate scarps measured during MESSENGER flybys 1 and 2

Zuber¹,

Montési

Farmer³

et al. 2010

Icarus

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“…Figure 2 shows the highly inclined, eccentric orbit that MESSENGER will achieve following insertion and trim maneuvers. This orbit represents a carefully considered trade between the sometimes competing requirements of the planetary interior, surface geology, atmospheric and magnetospheric science investigations and engineering constraints, particularly those related to the thermal environment (Solomon et al, 2001;Santo et al, 2001). This orbit satisfies the primary requirements of all of these planetary science disciplines and will enable an outstanding set of measurements to be gathered.…”

Section: Messenger Mssion Planmentioning

confidence: 99%

MESSENGER: Exploring Mercury’s Magnetosphere

et al. 2007

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Abstract. The MESSENGER mission to Mercury offers our first opportunity to explore this planet's miniature magnetosphere since the brief flybys of Mariner 10. Mercury's magnetosphere is unique in many respects. The magnetosphere of Mercury is among the smallest in the solar system; its magnetic field typically stands off the solar wind only -1000 to 2000 km above the surface. For this reason there are no closed drift paths for energetic particles and, hence, no radiation belts. The characteristic time scales for wave propagation and convective transport are short and kinetic and fluid modes may be coupled. Magnetic reconnection at the dayside magnetopause may erode the subsolar magnetosphere allowing solar wind ions to impact directly the regolith. Inductive currents in Mercury's interior may act to modify the solar wind interaction by resisting changes due to solar wind pressure variations. Indeed, observations of these induction effects may be an important source of information on the state of Mercury's interior. In addition, Mercury's magnetosphere is the only one with its defining magnetic flux tubes rooted in a planetary regolith as opposed to an atmosphere with a conductive ionospheric layer. This lack of an ionosphere is probably the underlying reason for the brevity of the very intense, but short-lived, -1-2 min, substorm-like energetic particle events observed by Mariner 10 during its first traversal of Mercury's magnetic tail. Because of Mercury's proximity to the sun, 0.3 -0.5 AU, this magnetosphere experiences the most extreme driving forces in the solar system. All of these factors are expected to produce complicated interactions involving the exchange and re-cycling of neutrals and ions between the solar wind, magnetosphere, and regolith. The electrodynamics of Mercury's magnetosphere are expected to be equally complex, with strong forcing by the solar wind, magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause and in the tail, and the pick-up of planetary ions all driving field-aligned electric currents.However, these field-aligned currents do not close in an ionosphere, but in some other manner. In addition to the insights-into magnetospheric physics offered by study of the solar wind -Mercury system, quantitative specification of the "external" magnetic field generated by magnetospheric currents is necessary for accurate determination of the strength and multi-polar decomposition of Mercury's intrinsic magnetic field.MESSENGER'S highly capable instrumentation and broad orbital coverage will greatly advance our understanding of both the origin of Mercury's magnetic field and the acceleration of charged particles in small magnetospheres. In. this article, we review what is known about Mercury's magnetosphere and describe the MESSENGER science team's strategy for obtaining answers to the outstanding science questions surrounding the interaction of the solar wind with Mercury and its small, but dynamic, magnetosphere.2

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“…An optimization of the launch date might yield a slightly shorter flight time. The MESSENGER-trajectory, however, is also not glob- [15].…”

Section: Mercury Rendezvous Mission Using a Solar Sailmentioning

confidence: 98%

Optimization of very-low-thrust trajectories using evolutionary neurocontrol

Dachwald

2005

Acta Astronautica

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Searching optimal interplanetary trajectories for low-thrust spacecraft is usually a difficult and time-consuming task that involves much experience and expert knowledge in astrodynamics and optimal control theory. This is because the convergence behavior of traditional local optimizers, which are based on numerical optimal control methods, depends on an adequate initial guess, which is often hard to find, especially for verylow-thrust trajectories that necessitate many revolutions around the sun. The obtained solutions are typically close to the initial guess that is rarely close to the (unknown) global optimum. Within this paper, trajectory optimization problems are attacked from the perspective of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Inspired by natural archetypes, a smart global method for low-thrust trajectory optimization is proposed that fuses artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms into so-called evolutionary neurocontrollers. This novel method runs without an initial guess and does not require the attendance of an expert in astrodynamics and optimal control theory. This paper details how evolutionary neurocontrol works and how it could be implemented. The performance of the method is assessed for three different interplanetary missions with a thrust to mass ratio < 0.15 mN/kg (solar sail and nuclear electric).

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The MESSENGER mission to Mercury: spacecraft and mission design

Cited by 97 publications

References 9 publications

Accommodation of lithospheric shortening on Mercury from altimetric profiles of ridges and lobate scarps measured during MESSENGER flybys 1 and 2

Accommodation of lithospheric shortening on Mercury from altimetric profiles of ridges and lobate scarps measured during MESSENGER flybys 1 and 2

MESSENGER: Exploring Mercury’s Magnetosphere

Optimization of very-low-thrust trajectories using evolutionary neurocontrol

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