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Mio—First Comprehensive Exploration of Mercury’s Space Environment: Mission Overview

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Abstract

Mercury has a unique and complex space environment with its weak global magnetic field, intense solar wind, tenuous exosphere, and magnetospheric plasma particles. This complex system makes Mercury an excellent science target to understand effects of the solar wind to planetary environments. In addition, investigating Mercury’s dynamic magnetosphere also plays a key role to understand extreme exoplanetary environment and its habitability conditions against strong stellar winds. BepiColombo, a joint mission to Mercury by the European Space Agency and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will address remaining open questions using two spacecraft, Mio and the Mercury Planetary Orbiter. Mio is a spin-stabilized spacecraft designed to investigate Mercury’s space environment, with a powerful suite of plasma instruments, a spectral imager for the exosphere, and a dust monitor. Because of strong constraints on operations during its orbiting phase around Mercury, sophisticated observation and downlink plans are required in order to maximize science outputs. This paper gives an overview of the Mio spacecraft and its mission, operations plan, and data handling and archiving.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to express sincere appreciation to all the members in the PI teams, the Mio science working group, the project teams of JAXA and ESA, and the industries for their long contributions to science managements, spacecraft developments, testing, and operations planning. Especially the authors would like to thank Dr. Hiroshi Yamakawa, Dr. Toshifumi Mukai, Dr. Hiroshi Matsumoto, Dr. Jean-Louis Bougeret, Dr. Lars Blomberg, Dr. Ken’ichi Nogami, Dr. Hiromi Shibata, and Dr. Jean-Andre Sauvaud for their efforts to the mission from the beginning.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 252-5210, Japan

    Go Murakami, Hajime Hayakawa, Hiroyuki Ogawa, Shoya Matsuda, Taeko Seki, Yoshifumi Saito & Masaki Fujimoto

  2. Planetary Plasma and Atmospheric Research Center, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, 980-8578, Japan

    Yasumasa Kasaba

  3. Department of Complexity Science and Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8561, Japan

    Ichiro Yoshikawa

  4. Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology, 2-17-1, Tsudanuma, Narashino, Chiba, 275-0016, Japan

    Masanori Kobayashi

  5. Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Schmiedlstraße 6, 8042, Graz, Austria

    Wolfgang Baumjohann

  6. Data Analysis Center for Geomagnetism and Space Magnetism, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Sakyo, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan

    Ayako Matsuoka

  7. Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto, 611-0011, Japan

    Hirotsugu Kojima

  8. Advanced Research Center for Space Science and Technology, Kanazawa University, Kakuma-machi, Kanazawa, 920-1192, Japan

    Satoshi Yagitani

  9. LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, 5, Place Jules Janssen, 92195, Meudon, France

    Michel Moncuquet

  10. Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Box 537, SE-751 21, Uppsala, Sweden

    Jan-Erik Wahlund

  11. CNRS-Universite d’Orleans-CNES, Orleans, 45071, France

    Dominique Delcourt

  12. Institute of Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, 464-8601, Japan

    Masafumi Hirahara

  13. Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Box 812, SE-981 28, Kiruna, Sweden

    Stas Barabash

  14. IKI-RAS Space Research Institute of Russian Academy of Science, Profsoyuznaya St. 84/32, Moscow, 117997, Russia

    Oleg Korablev

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  1. Go Murakami
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Correspondence to Go Murakami.

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The BepiColombo mission to Mercury

Edited by Johannes Benkhoff, Go Murakami and Ayako Matsuoka

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Murakami, G., Hayakawa, H., Ogawa, H. et al. Mio—First Comprehensive Exploration of Mercury’s Space Environment: Mission Overview. Space Sci Rev 216, 113 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00733-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00733-3

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