Bursty reconnection during BepiColombo's third Mercury flyby

Ali Varsani; Daniel Schmid; Helmut Lammer; Rumi Nakamura; Kristin Pump; Daniel Heyner; Gunter Laky; Harald Jeszenszky; Gabriel Giono; Martin Volwerk; Anna Milillo; Stefano Orsini; David Fischer; Werner Magnes; Wolfgang Baumjohann; Ayako Matsuoka

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19987

[Back] [Session PS1.2]

EGU24-19987, updated on 11 Mar 2024

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19987

EGU General Assembly 2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Bursty reconnection during BepiColombo's third Mercury flyby

Ali Varsani¹, Daniel Schmid¹, Helmut Lammer¹, Rumi Nakamura¹, Kristin Pump², Daniel Heyner², Gunter Laky¹, Harald Jeszenszky¹, Gabriel Giono¹, Martin Volwerk¹, Anna Milillo³, Stefano Orsini³, David Fischer¹, Werner Magnes¹, Wolfgang Baumjohann¹, and Ayako Matsuoka⁴

Ali Varsani et al.

¹Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
²IGEP, TU Braunschweig, Germany
³INAF-IAPS, Rome, Italy
⁴Kyoto University, Japan

Mercury is known to possess a Magnetosphere that is highly responsive to the upstream Solar Wind conditions. Previous studies using MESSENGER data have contributed to understanding the dynamics of Mercury's respond to the upstream. However, the interactions between the Magnetospheric plasma and the Solar Wind is yet to be fully understood; and it is indeed one of the main focuses of the ESA/JAXA's current mission, BepiColombo. We report the observations of BepiColombo's flyby-3 at Mercury on 19th June 2023, using ion data from SERENA-PICAM and magnetic field data from MAG/MGF instruments. The preliminary analyses have given an insight into the rapidly changing plasma, at the inbound Magnetopause crossing. There is evidence that bursty reconnection could be the main contributor to such dynamic boundary.

How to cite: Varsani, A., Schmid, D., Lammer, H., Nakamura, R., Pump, K., Heyner, D., Laky, G., Jeszenszky, H., Giono, G., Volwerk, M., Milillo, A., Orsini, S., Fischer, D., Magnes, W., Baumjohann, W., and Matsuoka, A.: Bursty reconnection during BepiColombo's third Mercury flyby, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-19987, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19987, 2024.