Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Dynamics of Low-Energy Ions in Mercury's Magnetosphere: Results From BepiColombo Mio's First Three Flybys

Résumé

Located close to the Sun, Mercury's magnetosphere is driven by the strong solar wind forcing. To investigate the workings of Mercury's magnetosphere that are yet to be fully understood, JAXA's Mio spacecraft (also known as Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter) is now en route to Mercury along with the other spacecraft of the BepiColombo mission, ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter. As of this writing, BepiColombo has conducted three Mercury flybys, from which Mio successfully obtained brand-new plasma data in Mercury's magnetosphere despite the limited configuration of cruise phase observations. A prominent feature of the first three flyby results is that each flyby shows unique and different properties of Mercury's magnetospheric plasma even though the three flybys have generally similar geometries entering the dusk-side magnetotail and exiting the magnetosphere on the dawn-day side. Here we present results from the three flyby observations by Mio with a particular focus on the dynamics of magnetospheric ions. During the first flyby, Mio observed generally low-energy ions in Mercury's magnetosphere, displaying the presence of cold dense ions below 100 eV/q and the absence of >10 keV/q ions. On the contrary, the second flyby is characterized by relatively high-energy ions with the detection of magnetospheric ions exceeding 10 keV/q and no detectable ions below 100 eV/q. As for the third flyby, both the cold dense ions and energetic ions are observed in the magnetosphere. The measured ion fluxes often exhibit rapid and large fluctuations, suggesting small-scale spatial structures and/or fast temporal variations. We discuss the origins, transport, and dynamics of the magnetospheric ion populations by exploiting the valuable data provided by Mio so far.

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Dates et versions

insu-04652816 , version 1 (18-07-2024)

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Yuki Harada, Yoshifumi Saito, Sae Aizawa, Lina Hadid, Nicolas André, et al.. Dynamics of Low-Energy Ions in Mercury's Magnetosphere: Results From BepiColombo Mio's First Three Flybys. AGU Fall Meeting 2023, 0000, à renseigner, Unknown Region. ⟨insu-04652816⟩
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