Ion Composition and Plasma Environment of Mercury

Details Ion Composition and Plasma Environment of Mercury Ion Composition and Plasma Environment of Mercury

May 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agusm.u24a..04g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #U24A-04

Physics

5410 Composition (1060, 3672), 5435 Ionospheres (2459), 5443 Magnetospheres (2756), 5494 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The first Mercury flyby (14 January 2008) by the MESSENGER spacecraft has revealed a rich plasma environment and provided the first measurements of the composition of ions in the vicinity of Mercury. We present results based on observations with the Fast Imaging Plasma Spectrometer (FIPS), the plasma sensor of the Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS) instrument on MESSENGER. This miniature (~1.4 kg) time-of- flight sensor has a broad field of view, ideal for the three-axis oriented spacecraft, which allows determination of plasma parameters and the mass/charge (m/q) composition of ions from ~50 eV to ~20 keV per charge with a time resolution of 2 s. Here we report on our preliminary measurements of the plasma moments (density, flow velocity and thermal speed) of protons (presumably of solar origin), and on the composition of heavy ions (~6 < m/q < ~40, most likely originating from Mercury) during the flyby of MESSENGER through the tail region of Mercury. We find that the heavy-ion flux peaks near closest approach and that the mass/charge spectrum has distinct peaks for m/q values at or near 23, 35, 28, 40, 16, and 12. We have also detected doubly charged C and O at m/q of 6 and 8 respectively. These first plasma and ion composition measurements have important implications for solar wind-magnetosphere interactions at Mercury.

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