Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2015

Presentation information

International Session (Oral)

Symbol P (Space and Planetary Sciences) » P-PS Planetary Sciences

[P-PS04] International Collaboration in Planetary and Space Sciences: Small Projects, Big Missions, Everything

Wed. May 27, 2015 2:15 PM - 4:00 PM A03 (APA HOTEL&RESORT TOKYO BAY MAKUHARI)

Convener:*Sho Sasaki(Department of Earth and Space Sciences, School of Science, Osaka University), Akimasa Yoshikawa(Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kyushu University), Steven Vance(Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech), Kunio Sayanagi(Hampton University), Yasuhito Sekine(Department of Complexity Science and Enginerring, Graduate School of Frontier Science, University of Tokyo), Shogo Tachibana(Department of Natural History Scieces, Hokkaido University), Chair:Akimasa Yoshikawa(Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kyushu University), Kunio Sayanagi(Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences Department, Hampton University)

3:20 PM - 3:40 PM

[PPS04-07] BepiColombo Euro-Japan Joint mission to Mercury

*Hajime HAYAKAWA1, Hironori MAEJIMA1 (1.ISAS/JAXA)

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 400 km x 12000 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 expected to be finished on early March this year. MMO FM will be transported to ESA/ESTEC on April. After some stand alone activity for MMO, JAXA will handover MMO to ESA to attend stack level (MCS) final AIV. BepiColombo is expected to be launched in summer 2016.

BepiColombo science working team (SWT) meeting, which discusses science related matters, is held once a year. In this paper, BepiColombo project as a test case of large collaboration between ESA and JAXA will be reported.