5:15 PM - 6:30 PM
[PPS11-P04] BepiColombo Euro-Japan Joint mission to Mercury
Keywords:Mercury, Planetary Exploration, International Collaboration
BepiColombo is a ESA-JAXA joint mission to Mercury with the aim to understand the process of planetary formation and evolution in the hottest part of the proto-planetary nebula as well as to understand similarities and differences between the magnetospheres of Mercury and Earth.
The baseline mission consists of two spacecraft, i.e. the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). JAXA is responsible for the development and operation of MMO, while ESA is responsible for the development and operation of MPO as well as the launch, transport, and the insertion of two spacecraft into their dedicated orbits.
MMO is designed as a spin-stabilized spacecraft to be placed in a 600 km x 11400 km polar orbit. The spacecraft will accommodate instruments mostly dedicated to the study of the magnetic field, waves, and particles near Mercury. While MPO is designed as a 3-axis stabilized spacecraft to be placed in a 400km x 1500 km polar orbit. Both spacecraft will be in same orbital plane.
Critical Design Review(CDR) for MMO project is completed in November 2011 while ESA Spacecraft CDR is completed in Novemver 2013. MMO stand alone FM AIV is completed on March 2015. MMO FM was transported to ESA/ESTEC on April. Stand alone activity for MMO was completed in December 2015. MMO is waiting for the stack level (MCS) final AIV. BepiColombo is expected to be launched in 2017.
BepiColombo science working team (SWT) meeting, which discusses science related matters, was held once a year and will be held twice a year from this year. In this paper, BepiColombo project as a test case of large collaboration between ESA and JAXA will be reported.
The baseline mission consists of two spacecraft, i.e. the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). JAXA is responsible for the development and operation of MMO, while ESA is responsible for the development and operation of MPO as well as the launch, transport, and the insertion of two spacecraft into their dedicated orbits.
MMO is designed as a spin-stabilized spacecraft to be placed in a 600 km x 11400 km polar orbit. The spacecraft will accommodate instruments mostly dedicated to the study of the magnetic field, waves, and particles near Mercury. While MPO is designed as a 3-axis stabilized spacecraft to be placed in a 400km x 1500 km polar orbit. Both spacecraft will be in same orbital plane.
Critical Design Review(CDR) for MMO project is completed in November 2011 while ESA Spacecraft CDR is completed in Novemver 2013. MMO stand alone FM AIV is completed on March 2015. MMO FM was transported to ESA/ESTEC on April. Stand alone activity for MMO was completed in December 2015. MMO is waiting for the stack level (MCS) final AIV. BepiColombo is expected to be launched in 2017.
BepiColombo science working team (SWT) meeting, which discusses science related matters, was held once a year and will be held twice a year from this year. In this paper, BepiColombo project as a test case of large collaboration between ESA and JAXA will be reported.