Extraction of the tidal amplitude from synthetic topography data of the BepiColombo laser altimeter in the polar regions of Mercury

Details Extraction of the tidal amplitude from synthetic topography data of the BepiColombo laser altimeter in the polar regions of Mercury Extraction of the tidal amplitude from synthetic topography data of the BepiColombo laser altimeter in the polar regions of Mercury

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..220k&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a

Physics

Scientific paper

ABSTRACT BepiColombo is one of the cornerstone missions of ESA to investigate Mercury which is the least investigated planet in the Solar System. The weak magnetic field observed by Mariner 10 in 1974 can be explained by a partly liquid core. The tidal Love number h2 reveals information on the thickness of the liquid outer core. The BepiColombo laser altimeter (BELA) on board the MPO spacecraft will map the entire surface of Mercury and should in principle allow for the retrieval of the tidal elevation of order one meter caused by solar gravitation. The highest density of BELA data are to be expected in the polar regions of Mercury because MPO orbits Mercury on a nearly polar trajectory. In previous simulations, we have tested whether it is possible to retrieve the tidal Love number h2 simultaneously with a spherical harmonic analysis of the global static topography of Mercury. Here, the analysis of orbit crossing points is presented. This analysis contains three main sources of uncertainty: a) instrumental and spacecraft positioning uncertainties, b) uncertainties due to the small-scale topography between two laser altimeter measurements, and c) uncertainties from the interpolation between laser altimeter measurement points. It can be shown that the uncertainty of the Love number can be reduced to about 3% using the crossing-point method. This is sufficient to test present theoretical models on the interior structure of Mercury.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Extraction of the tidal amplitude from synthetic topography data of the BepiColombo laser altimeter in the polar regions of Mercury does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Extraction of the tidal amplitude from synthetic topography data of the BepiColombo laser altimeter in the polar regions of Mercury, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Extraction of the tidal amplitude from synthetic topography data of the BepiColombo laser altimeter in the polar regions of Mercury will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1793107