Title
On the space environment of Mercury
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2004
Department/School
Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Since the rapid flybys of Mariner 10 in the late seventies, Mercury is known to have an intrinsic magnetic field that dominates the interactions of Mercury with its space environment. Even though important aspects of this interaction have been probed by the Mariner 10 instruments, crucial aspects remain unknown and unexplored. In particular there are fundamental uncertainties concerning the ion content of Mercury's magnetosphere as well as issues related to the expected time-dependence of its magnetosphere due to the forcing by the interplanetary environment or due to substorm-like behavior. This paper will focus on a few specific topics that are related to the anticipated in situ investigations of MESSENGER and Bepi-Colombo later this decade.
Link to Published Version
Recommended Citation
Zurbuchen, T. H., Koehn, P., Fisk, L. A., Gombosi, T., Gloeckler, G., & Kabin, K. (2004). On the space environment of Mercury. Advances in Space Research, 33(11), 1884–1889. doi:10.1016/j.asr.2003.04.048