Physics
Scientific paper
Apr 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003eaeja.....8721l&link_type=abstract
EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #8721
Physics
Scientific paper
The presentation summarizes the current understanding of the structure and dynamics of the Mercury's magnetosphere. The planet possesses a small internal magnetic field, which is usually strong enough to stand off the solar wind stream at some altitude above the subsolar surface, resulting in a plasma cavity, that is, a magnetosphere around the planet. However, during strong storm intervals caused by CME's, the magnetosphere may develop in quite an unpredictable manner. The planet fills a large part of the magnetosphere, which results in large loss cones on the dayside of the magnetosphere, causing a solar wind - magnetosphere coupling that is different from that around the Earth. The planet's atmosphere is very weak, and therefore the ionized atmospheric environment at Mercury does not form an ionosphere. Thus, magnetospheric electric current systems cannot be closed via the ionosphere as it happens in the Earth's environment. This will lead into various major questions that will be studied with the future Mercury missions. Finally, the size of the magnetosphere is quite small so that the time scales of various processes are very short, creating many challenges to the satellite observations. We end the presentation with a summary of the key observations needed to monitor the physical processes in the Mercury's magnetosphere, and how the future missions will reply to these requirements.
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