Abstract | N. André2, S. Barabash3, D. Delcourt4, D. Heyner5, J. Huovelin6, R. Moissl7, M. Moncuquet8, S. Orsini1, Y. Saito9, R. Vainio10, A. Varsani11, S. Aizawa2, T. Alberti1, W. Baumjohann11, J. Benkhoff7, L. Hadid12, M. Grande13, L. Griton8, L. Gunter11, K. Issautier8, H. Jeszenszky11, Y. Kasaba14, H. Lichtenegger11, G. Murakami9, H. Nilsson3, J. Raines15, B. Sanchez-Cano16, J. Slavin15, P. Wurz17, J. Zender7,
A. Aronica1, C.M. Carr18, I. Dandouras2, E. De Angelis1, E. Esko6, A. Fedorov2, B. Fiethe5, H. Fischer, D. Fontaine12, M. Fraenz19, C-H. Glassmeier5, Y. Harada20, R. Jarvinen6, E. Kallio6, T. Karlsson21, B. Katra, A. Kazakov1, H. Kojima22, S. Korpela6, N. Krupp19, H. Krueger19, F. Leblanc23, A. Lehtolainen6, S. Livi24, W. Magnes11, V. Mangano1, A. Matsuoka9, W. Miyake, R. Nakamura11, R. Noschese1, P. Oleynik10, A. Olivieri25, M. Persson2, M. Phillips24, C. Plainaki25, R. Rispoli1, J A Sauvaud2, D. Schmid19, R. Sordini1, B. Trantham24, C. Verdeil, N. Vertolli1, S. Yagitani26, I. Yoshikawa14, S. Yokota27, J.-E. Wahlund3, M. Wieser3, R. Wallner
18. Imperial College London, UK
19. Marx Plank institute, Germany
20. Kyushu University, Japan
21. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
22. Kyoto University, Japan
23. LATMOS/IPSL, Sorbonne Université, France
24. SWRI, TX, USA
25. ASI, Italy
26. University of Kanazawa, Japan
27. Osaka University, Japan
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo satellite suite has passed by its target planet Mercury for the first time on 1st October 2021. The trajectory was in the southern hemisphere from nightside dusk toward dayside dawn, thus crossing the magnetosheath, the magnetotail, nightside plasma sheet and exiting in dayside dawnward magnetopause and bow shock. It explored, for the first time, regions never observed by other spacecraft in the past. All the instruments able to perform science observations in cruise configurations have been operated providing the first observations of Mercury’s inner southern magnetosphere and surrounding regions. These observations include magnetic fields, solar wind and magnetospheric ions and electrons in different energy ranges, plasma waves, energetic particles and exosphere. During the pass, BepiColombo encountered a low interplanetary magnetic field and low energy solar wind. Unexpected interesting signals have been observed in the solar wind before the magnetospheric bow shock, at the magnetopause inbound as well as in the outbound solar wind. This paper will present a general overview of the observations, just as a first taste of the great results expected from this mission. |
