[P-PS09] Planetary Sciences

[PPS09-P21] Participation of Japanese planetary science community to the Mercury exploration mission BepiColombo

*Shunichi Kamata¹, Ryuki Hyodo², Futoshi Takahashi³, Takashi Yoshizaki⁴, Yota Ishigaki², Kiyoshi Kuramoto¹, Go Murakami², Masaki Fujimoto² (1.Hokkaido Univ., 2.ISAS/JAXA, 3.Kyusyu Univ., 4.Tohoku Univ.)

Keywords:BepiColombo, Mercury, Planetary formation, Planetary evolution

The BepiColombo mission to Mercury is a joint mission between Europe and Japan and is ongoing. It was launched on Oct. 20, 2018 from French Guiana and will be inserted to the orbit in Dec. 2025. This mission uses two satellites; "Mio" provided by JAXA will mainly investigate the magnetosphere and the exosphere, and "Mercury Planetary Orbiter" provided by ESA will investigate the surface and interior of Mercury. Because of this, Japanese planetary science community has a little involvement into the mission. However, an international call for Interdisciplinary Scientists (IDS) for the mission last year has changed this situation. We have started to model the multi-step formation and evolution theory of Mercury and to test it using various kinds of data sets. In this presentation we will report our activities and future plan.