Combining MESSENGER Neutron Spectrometer Data from Mercury Flybys 1 and 3: Estimates of the Global Concentration of Neutron-absorbing Elements on Mercury’s Surface

Details Combining MESSENGER Neutron Spectrometer Data from Mercury Flybys 1 and 3: Estimates of the Global Concentration of Neutron-absorbing Elements on Mercury’s Surface Combining MESSENGER Neutron Spectrometer Data from Mercury Flybys 1 and 3: Estimates of the Global Concentration of Neutron-absorbing Elements on Mercury’s Surface

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p23d..07l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P23D-07

Physics

[5410] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Composition, [6235] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mercury

Scientific paper

MESSENGER Neutron Spectrometer (NS) measurements of cosmic-ray-generated thermal neutrons provide information about the neutron-absorbing elements Fe, Ti, Gd, and Sm on Mercury’s surface. Fe and Ti, in particular, are important for understanding Mercury’s formation and how its crust may have evolved through magmatic processes. With the neutron Doppler filter technique - a method for neutron energy-separation utilizing spacecraft velocity - data from the first Mercury flyby (M1) and subsequent analyses have shown that Mercury’s surface has abundant neutron-absorbing materials, which are most likely some combination of Fe and Ti. These results are in contrast to previous inferences that Mercury’s surface has generally low abundances of Fe and Ti, and specifically low Fe concentrations within silicate rocks. On 29 September 2009, the MESSENGER spacecraft completed its third and final flyby of Mercury. During this flyby (M3), the spacecraft executed a rotation maneuver similar to that conducted during M1, which enabled thermal neutrons to be measured at approximately 0○ N, 0○E (The second flyby did not have a rotation maneuver sufficiently close to Mercury to enable a robust measurement of thermal neutrons). The most significant difference for NS measurements between M1 and M3 is that the spacecraft rotation during M3 occurred on the opposite hemisphere (~180○N, 0○E) from that of the M1 flyby. Thus, although the spatial footprint of these measurements is large (>800 km diameter), the M1 and M3 data provide direct, compositional information for opposite sides of the planet. Resolvable differences between the two measurements would be evidence of large-scale compositional heterogeneity on Mercury’s surface.

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