This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The joint BepiColombo mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is settling into orbit around Mercury after an eight-year journey. In early September, BepiColombo's two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, separated from the transfer module.
The orbiters will enter Mercury's orbit in November and separate from each other in December. During its eight-year journey, the spacecraft has already flown past Mercury at close range six times. During its fourth flyby in September 2024, BepiColombo came remarkably close to the surface, at a distance of just 165 kilometers (103 miles).
During the flyby, electrons and protons accelerated by a solar eruption bombarded the planet. The SIXS particle and X-ray detector, designed and built in Finland for BepiColombo, detected how these particles penetrated the planet's magnetic field and rained down onto its surface. These measurements from the SIXS instrument have now been published in Nature Astronomy.
"The fourth flyby was truly unique," says Emilia Kilpua, principal investigator of SIXS and professor of space physics at the University of Helsinki. "The spacecraft came much closer to the surface than it will be in its final orbit, and we were lucky that a major particle eruption occurred on the sun at exactly that moment." SIXS revealed that during such an eruption, a large number of highly energetic particles reach Mercury's surface across a wide area. The planet has no significant atmosphere to protect it.
The high-energy particles that rain down on the surface knock atoms and molecules loose from Mercury's surface and generate X-ray radiation. These processes provide insights into Mercury's surface composition and how the planet has evolved. When in orbit, several instruments can study these processes together.
"Mercury's magnetic field is weaker than Earth's, and its magnetosphere is much smaller than Earth's," says Rami Vainio, co-principal investigator (co-PI) of SIXS and professor of space physics at the University of Turku. The conditions at Mercury resemble those that would occur on Earth when a powerful solar storm compresses its magnetosphere. "SIXS's observations help us assess how destructive particle radiation would penetrate Earth's near-space environment and atmosphere during the most powerful space storms," Vainio says.
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