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Article Dans Une Revue The Planetary Science Journal Année : 2024

Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere

Deborah Domingue
François Leblanc
Menelaos Sarantos
Daniel W Savin

Résumé

We provide an overview of our understanding of the dust environment at Mercury and the role that dust plays in shaping the planetʼs surface and exosphere. Our understanding of the role that dust impacts play in the generation of Mercuryʼs atmosphere has evolved considerably with continued analysis of results from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission. Recent models have provided evidence for the probable release of refractory species into Mercuryʼs exosphere via impacts. However, there remain significant questions regarding the relative contributions of atoms released via impacts versus other mechanisms (e.g., photon-stimulated desorption) to the overall exospheric budget. We also discuss the state of observational and modeling efforts to constrain the dust environment at Mercury, including sources from the zodiacal cloud, cometary trails, and interstellar dust. We describe the advancements that will be made in our characterization of dust at Mercury with BepiColombo, providing observational constraints on the dust clouds themselves and the role that impacts play in exospheric generation. On Mercuryʼs surface, there remain outstanding questions regarding the role that dust impacts play in the regolith cycling and development. We review how improved modeling efforts to understand grain lifetimes as a function of impactor flux will further our understanding of Mercuryʼs regolith. Finally, there are few constraints on the role of dust impacts on the space weathering of Mercuryʼs surface, particularly the expected chemical, physical, and spectral alterations to the regolith. Here we discuss the importance of laboratory experiments to simulate these processes for the interpretation of data from MESSENGER and BepiColombo. Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Mercury (planet) (1024); Zodiacal cloud (1845); Exosphere (499); Impact gardening (2299); Dust composition (2271)
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Dates et versions

insu-04458810 , version 1 (15-02-2024)

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Harald Krüger, Michelle S Thompson, Masanori Kobayashi, Valeria Mangano, Martina Moroni, et al.. Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere. The Planetary Science Journal, 2024, 5, pp.36. ⟨10.3847/psj/ad11f5⟩. ⟨insu-04458810⟩
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