PHEBUS on Bepi-Colombo: Post-launch Update and Instrument Performance
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PHEBUS on Bepi-Colombo: Post-launch Update and Instrument Performance Eric Quémerais1 · Jean-Yves Chaufray1 · Dimitra Koutroumpa1 · Francois Leblanc1 · Aurélie Reberac1 · Benjamin Lustrement1 · Christophe Montaron1 · Jean-Francois Mariscal1 · Nicolas Rouanet1 · Ichiro Yoshikawa2 · Go Murakami2 · Kazuo Yoshioka2 · Oleg Korablev3 · Denis Belyaev3 · Maria G. Pelizzo4 · Alan Corso4 · Paola Zuppella4 Received: 12 December 2019 / Accepted: 15 May 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The Bepi-Colombo mission was launched in October 2018, headed for Mercury. This mission is a collaboration between Europe and Japan. It is dedicated to the study of Mercury and its environment. It will be inserted into Mercury orbit in December 2025 after a 7-year long cruise. Probing of Hermean Exosphere By Ultraviolet Spectroscopy (PHEBUS) is an ultraviolet Spectrograph and is one of the 11 instruments on-board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO). It is dedicated to the study of the exosphere of Mercury, its composition, dynamics and variability and its interface with the surface of the planet and the solar wind. The PHEBUS instrument contains four distinct detectors covering the spectral range from 55 nm up to 315 nm and two additional narrow windows at 404 nm and 422 nm. It also has a one-degree of freedom mechanism that allows observations along a cone with an half angle of 80◦ . This paper follows a detailed presentation of the PHEBUS instrument design that was presented by Chassefière et al. (Planet. Space Sci. 58:201–223, 2010). Here we present an update of the science objectives and measurement requirements following the results published by the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission. We also present results of the ground calibration campaigns of the flight unit that is currently on-board MPO. In the last part, we present some details of the observations that will be performed during the cruise to Mercury, such as stellar observation campaigns, interplanetary background observations and planetary flybys. Keywords Mercury · UV spectrograph · Exosphere The BepiColombo mission to Mercury Edited by Johannes Benkhoff, Go Murakami and Ayako Matsuoka
B E. Quémerais
[email protected]
1
LATMOS-OVSQ, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin, 11 boulevard d’Alembert, Guyancourt, France
2
Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan
3
IKI, Moscow, Russia
4
University of Padova, Padova, Italy
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1 Introduction The Bepi-Colombo mission is a European Space Agency – Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (ESA-JAXA) collaboration dedicated to the study of Mercury covering all topics from the inner structure to the environment of the planet closest to the Sun. The BepiColombo mission was launched in October 2018 and is now on its way to Mercury. This mission is composed of two spacecraft, the Europe-led Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Japan-led Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO). PHEBUS, an acronym for Probing the Hermean Exosphere By Ultraviolet Spectroscop
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