The thermal environment in near-surface layers of Mercury and the requirements for heat flow measurements

Computer Science – Performance

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Scientific paper

ESA´s BepiColombo Mission to Mercury may include a Surface Element. One of the instruments in the strawman payload (HP3), as described in ESA´s "White Book", aims at a measurement of the surface heat flow. HP3 would use a self-penetrating device (Mole) to carry its sensors up to a depth of several meters. Because of the fundamental meaning of the surface heat flow for the internal dynamics (present and past), possible ongoing tectonics, and the longuevity of volcanism and a self-sustained magentic field, the envisaged measurements are of high priority. On the other hand, ressources on a possible surface element will be extremely tight, and each candidate instrument will have to prove its feasibility in technical but also scientific terms. We must convince ourselves and the community that a good measurement of the surface heat flow is possible under the given restrictions concerning mass, volume, power and mission duration. In order to constrain the required instrument performance and the required penetration depth, the subsurface temperatures for various cases are studied. Free parameters are latitude of the landing site, season, thermal conductivity, density, surface heat flow, penetration depth of the mole and desired accuracy. For each of these cases the consequences for a thermal probe are studied. Finally, possible instrument configurations are discussed with respect to their specific advantages and disadvantages.

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