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Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission

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Abstract

An in-situ cosmic-dust instrument called the Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) had been developed as a part of the science payload for the Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO) stage of the joint European Space Agency (ESA)–JAXA Mercury-exploration mission. The BepiColombo spacecraft was successfully launched by an Ariane 5 rocket on October 20, 2018, and commissioning tests of the science payload were successfully completed in near-earth orbit before injection into a long journey to Mercury. MDM has a sensor consisting of four plates of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which converts the mechanical stress (or strain) induced by dust-particle impacts into electrical signals. After the commencement of scientific operations, MDM will measure the impact momentum at which dust particles in orbit around the Sun collide with the sensor and record the arrival direction. This paper provides basic information concerning the MDM instrument and its predicted scientific operation as a future reference for scientific articles concerning the MDM’s observational data.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to give heartfelt thanks to Mr. S. Bugiel, who operates the Van de Graaff accelerator of the Heidelberg Dust Accelerator Facility in MPI-K, and also to Mr. T. Omata, who operates the Van de Graaff accelerator of HIT at the University of Tokyo for MDM calibration. We also gratefully appreciate the elaborative support from Meisei Electric Co., Ltd. for the development of the MDM system. H.K. gratefully acknowledges support from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS grant S16740) for a research visit at the Planetary Exploration Research Center at the Chiba Institute of Technology, during which a significant part of the numerical simulation work presented in this paper was performed. The IMEM and IMEX Dust Streams in Space models were developed under ESA funding (contracts 21928/08/NL/AT and 4000106316/12/NL/AF-IMEX). Finally, this study was supported by the Hypervelocity Impact Facility (former facility name: the Space Plasma Laboratory), ISAS, JAXA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Planetary Exploration Research Center, Chiba Institute of Technology, Narashino, Chiba, 275-0016, Japan

    Masanori Kobayashi, Takayuki Hirai, Hiroshi Kimura & Takashi Miyachi

  2. The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University, Ibaraki, Osaka, 567-0047, Japan

    Hiromi Shibata

  3. Department of Earth and Space Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Osaka, 560-0043, Japan

    Sho Sasaki

  4. Dokkyo Medical University, Mibu, Tochigi, 321-0293, Japan

    Ken’ichi Nogami

  5. FAM Science Co., Ltd., Tsukubamirai, Ibaraki, 300-2436, Japan

    Masayuki Fujii

  6. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 252-5210, Japan

    Sunao Hasegawa & Hajime Yano

  7. Department of Aerospace Engineering, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, 36849-5338, USA

    Masatoshi Hirabayashi

  8. Department of Heavy Particle Medical Science, Graduate School of Medical Science, Yamagata University, Yamagata, Yamagata, 990-9585, Japan

    Takeo Iwai

  9. Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Aichi, 464-8603, Japan

    Maki Nakamura

  10. Department of Ocean Sciences, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108-8477, Japan

    Hideo Ohashi

  11. Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka City University, Osaka, Osaka, 558-8585, Japan

    Seiji Takechi

  12. Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Göttingen, D-37077, Germany

    Harald Krüger, Ann-Kathrin Lohse & Peter Strub

  13. Institut für Raumfahrtsysteme, Universität, Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 70569, Germany

    Ralf Srama & Peter Strub

  14. Baylor University, Waco, TX, 76798, USA

    Ralf Srama

  15. Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik, Heidelberg, 69117, Germany

    Eberhard Grün

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  1. Masanori Kobayashi
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The BepiColombo mission to Mercury

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Kobayashi, M., Shibata, H., Nogami, K. et al. Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission. Space Sci Rev 216, 144 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00775-7

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