Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2021

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[J] Oral

P (Space and Planetary Sciences ) » P-CG Complex & General

[P-CG18] Planetary Magnetosphere, Ionosphere, and Atmosphere

Thu. Jun 3, 2021 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM Ch.04 (Zoom Room 04)

convener:Kanako Seki(Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo), Hiroyuki Maezawa(Department of Physical Science Osaka Prefecture University), Takeshi Imamura(Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo), Naoki Terada(Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University), Chairperson:Tomoki Kimura(Tokyo University of Science), Hiroyuki Maezawa(Department of Physical Science Osaka Prefecture University), Kanako Seki(Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo)

9:00 AM - 9:15 AM

[PCG18-01] Current status, initial results, and upcoming observation plans during cruise of BepiColombo

*Go Murakami1, Johannes Benkhoff2 (1.Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 2.European Space Agency)

Keywords:Mercury, Venus, Heliosphere

The ESA-JAXA joint mission BepiColombo is now on the track to Mercury. After the successful launch of the two spacecraft for BepiColombo, Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter: MMO) and Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), commissioning operations of the spacecraft and their science payloads were completed. BepiColombo will arrive at Mercury in the end of 2025, and it has 7-years cruise with the heliocentric distance range of 0.3-1.2 AU. The long cruise phase also includes 9 planetary flybys: once at the Earth, twice at Venus, and 6 times at Mercury. Even during the interplanetary cruise phase, the BepiColombo mission can contribute to the heliospheric physics and planetary space weather in the inner solar system. In addition, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and it is orbiting around Sun (~0.05 AU at perihelion). ESA’s Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020 and will have a highly elliptic orbit between 1.2 AU at aphelion and 0.28AU at perihelion. These multi spacecraft observations provide us great opportunities to investigate the inner heliosphere. The Earth flyby and the first Venus flyby were successfully completed on 10 April 2020 and on 15 October 2020, respectively. Planetary flybys are great opportunities not only for scientific motivation but also for instrument calibrations. Especially ion sensors onboard MPO (SERENA/MIPA and PICAM) and Mio (MPPE/MIA and MSA) can detect ions only during the planetary flybys because of constraints on spacecraft attitude and field of views. During the two flybys in 2020 science observations are performed and plasma instruments successfully measured both the Earth’s magnetosphere and Venus’s induced magnetosphere. The second Venus flyby and the first Mercury flyby will happen on 10 August 2021 and on 1 October 2021, respectively. Here we present the updated status of BepiColombo mission, initial results of the science observations during the interplanetary cruise and planetary flybys, and the upcoming observation plans.