BepiColombo at Mercury: First close-in magnetic field measurements from the southern hemisphere
- 1TU Braunschweig, Institut für Geophysik und extraterrestrische Physik, Braunschweig, Germany (d.heyner@tu-bs.de)
- 2Imperial College, London, UK
- 3Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany
- 4LPG, Nantes, France
- 5IWF, Graz, Austria
- 6University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
The internal magnetic field of Mercury is best described by a northward offset dipole with almost zero obliquity. Its offset, weakness, axisymmetry and lack of secular variation still poses a challenge to dynamo theory. After NASA’s Mariner 10 flybys in the 1970’s and MESSENGER’s orbital mission in 2011-2015, BepiColombo performed a flyby at Mercury in October 2021. For the first time, magnetic field measurements are obtained from the southern hemisphere by the fluxgate magnetometer MPO-MAG. We will present an overview of the flyby data and compare the new in-situ data to magnetospheric models obtained from the previous missions to the innermost terrestrial planet. Does the flyby data reveal any secular variation? Has the dipole offset changed? These are some of the questions we will discuss with this unprecedented magnetometer data. We will close with a discussion on what is to be expected from the orbital phase of BepiColombo.
Anderson, Dougherty, Mandea, Matsushima, Oliveira, Vennerstrom, Vogt, Zhang
How to cite: Heyner, D., Carr, C., Auster, U., Richter, I., Kolhey, P., Exner, W., Mieth, J., Plaschke, F., Pump, K., Wicht, J., Langlais, B., Berghofer, G., Schmid, D., Baumjohann, W., Fischer, D., Horbury, T., Magnes, W., Masters, A., Slavin, J., and Glassmeier, K.-H. and the MPO-MAG Team: BepiColombo at Mercury: First close-in magnetic field measurements from the southern hemisphere, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-8509, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-8509, 2022.
