The MEFISTO and WPT Electric Field Sensors of the Plasma Wave Investigation on the BepiColombo Mio Spacecraft
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The MEFISTO and WPT Electric Field Sensors of the Plasma Wave Investigation on the BepiColombo Mio Spacecraft Measurements of Low and High Frequency Electric Fields at Mercury T. Karlsson1 · Y. Kasaba2 · J.-E. Wahlund3 · P. Henri4,5 · L. Bylander1 · W. Puccio3 · S.-E. Jansson3 · L. Åhlen3 · E. Kallio6 · H. Kojima7 · A. Kumamoto8 · K. Lappalainen9 · B. Lybekk10 · K. Ishisaka11 · A. Eriksson3 · M. Morooka3 Received: 28 December 2019 / Accepted: 30 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper describes the design of MEFISTO (Mercury Electric Field In-Situ Tool) and WPT (Wire Probe Antenna) electric field sensors for Plasma Wave Investigation (PWI) on the BepiColombo Mio spacecraft (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO). The two sensors will enable the first observations of electric fields, plasma waves and radio waves in and around the Hermean magnetosphere and exosphere. MEFISTO and WPT are dipole antennas with 31.6 m tip-to-tip length. Each antenna element has a spherical probe at each end of the wire (15 m length). They are extended orthogonally in the spin plane of the spacecraft and enable measurements of the electric field in the frequency range of DC to 10 MHz by the connection to two sets of receivers, EWO for a lower frequency range and The BepiColombo mission to Mercury Edited by Johannes Benkhoff, Go Murakami and Ayako Matsuoka
B T. Karlsson
[email protected]
1
Space and Plasma Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 10405 Stockholm, Sweden
2
Planetary Plasma and Atmospheric Research Center, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan
3
Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Box 537, 751 21 Uppsala, Sweden
4
LPC2E, CNRS, Orléans, France
5
Laboratoire Lagrange, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France
6
Finnish Meteorological Institute, Space Research Unit, Helsinki, Finland
7
Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan
8
Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan
9
University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
10
Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
11
Department of Electronics and Informatics, Toyama Prefectural University, Imizu, Toyama 939-0398, Japan
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SORBET for higher frequencies. In the initial operations after the launch (20 Oct. 2018), we succeeded to confirm the health of both antennas and to release the launch lock of the WPT. After Mercury orbit insertion planned at the end of 2025, both sensors will be fully deployed and activate full operations of the PWI electric field measurements. Keywords Electric fields · Plasma waves · Spacecraft potential · Electron density and temperature · MEFISTO · Wire Probe Antenna (WPT) · Plasma Wave Investigation (PWI) · Mio · Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO) · BepiColombo
1 Introduction The BepiColombo project is a Euro-Japanese joint mission for the investigation of Mercury, the innermost planet
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