The BepiColombo mission to Mercury is an ESA/JAXA cornerstone mission, consisting of two spacecraft in orbit around Mercury addressing several scientific issues. One spacecraft is the Mercury Planetary Orbiter, with full instrumentation to perform radio science experiments. Very precise radio tracking from Earth, on-board accelerometer and optical measurements will provide large data sets. From these it will be possible to study the global gravity field of Mercury and its tidal variations, its rotation state and the orbit of its centre of mass. With the gravity field and rotation state, it is possible to constrain the internal structure of the planet. With the orbit of Mercury, it is possible to constrain relativistic theories of gravitation. In order to assess that all the scientific goals are achievable with the required level of accuracy, full cycle numerical simulations of the radio science experiment have been performed. Simulated tracking, accelerometer and optical camera data have been generated, and a long list of variables including the spacecraft initial conditions, the accelerometer calibrations and the gravity field coefficients have been determined by a least-squares fit. The simulation results are encouraging: the experiments are feasible at the required level of accuracy provided that some critical terms in the accelerometer error are moderated. We will show that BepiColombo will be able to provide at least an order of magnitude improvement in the knowledge of Love number k 2 , libration amplitudes and obliquity, along with a gravity field determination up to degree 25 with a signal-to-noise ratio of 10.

This work analyses the consequences that the desaturation manoeuvres can have on the precise orbit determination corresponding to the Mercury Orbiter Radioscience Experiment (MORE) of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury. This is an ESA/JAXAjoint project with challenging objectives regarding geodesy, geophysics and fundamental physics. We will show how these manoeuvres affect the orbit of the s/c and the radio science measurements and how to include them in the orbit determination and parameter estimation procedure. The non-linear least-squares fit is applied on a set of observational arcs separated by intervals of time where the probe is not visible. With the current baseline of two ground stations, two manoeuvres are performed per day, one during the observing session and the other in the dark. To reach the scientific goals of the mission, they have to be treated as 'solve for quantities'. We developed a specific methodology based on the deterministic propagation of the orbit, which is able to deal with these variables, by connecting subsequent observational arcs in a smooth way. The numerical simulations demonstrate that this constrained multi-arc strategy is able to determine all the manoeuvres together with the other parameters of interest at a high level of accuracy

Abstract. To test General Relativity with the tracking data of the BepiColombo Mercury orbiter we need relativistic models for the orbits of Mercury and of the Earth, for the light-time and for all the spatio-temporal reference frames involved, with accuracy corresponding to the measurements: 10 cm in range, 2 micron/s in range-rate, over 2 years.For the dynamics we start from the Lagrangian post-Newtonian (PN) formulation, using a relativistic equation for the solar system barycenter to avoid rank deficiency. In the determination of the PN parameters, the difficulty in disentangling the effects of β from the ones of the Sun's oblateness is confirmed. We have found a consistent formulation for the preferred frame effects, although the center of mass is not an integral. For the identification of strong equivalence principle (SEP) violations we use a formulation containing both direct and indirect effects (through the modified position of the Sun in a barycentric frame).In the light-time equations, the Shapiro effect is modeled to PN order 1 but with an order 2 correction compatible with (Moyer 2003). The 1.5-PN order corrections containing the Sun's velocity are not relevant at the required level of accuracy.To model the orbit of the probe, we use a mercury-centric reference frame with its own "Mercury Dynamic Time": this is the largest and the only relativistic correction required, taking into account the major uncertainties introduced by non-gravitational perturbations.A delicate issue is the compatibility of our solution with the ephemerides for the other planets, and for the Moon, which cannot be improved by the BepiColombo data alone. Conversely, we plan to later export the BepiColombo measurements, as normal points, to contribute with their unprecedented accuracy to the global improvement of the planetary ephemerides.

Space missions can have as a goal the determination of the interior structure of a planet: this is the case for the ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. Very precise range and range‐rate tracking from the Earth and onboard accelerometry will provide a huge amount of data, from which it will be possible to study the gravity field of Mercury and other parameters of interest. Gravity can be used to constrain the interior structure, but cannot uniquely determine the interior mass distribution. A much stronger constraint on the interior can be given by also determining the rotation state of the planet. If the planet is asymmetric enough, the gravity field as measured by an orbiting probe tracked from the Earth contains signatures from the rotation. Are these enough to solve for the rotation state, to the required accuracy, from tracking data alone, without measurements of the surface? In order to reach some result analytically, a simplified analytical model is developed, and the symmetry breaking, occurring when the shape of the planet deviates from spherical symmetry, is characterized by explicit formulae. Moreover, a full cycle numerical simulation of the Radio Science Experiment is performed, including the generation of simulated tracking and accelerometer data and the determination, by least‐squares fit, of the Mercury‐centric initial conditions of the probe, of Mercury's gravity field and its rotation state, together with other parameters affecting the dynamics. The conclusion is that there is no reason of principle prohibiting the determination of the rotation from gravimetry, and the sensitivity of the measurements and the coverage are good enough to perform the experiment at the required level of accuracy. This will be important also in ensuring independent terms of comparison for the rotation experiment performed with a high‐resolution camera. The mission is currently under development and much care has to be taken in guaranteeing the scientific goals even if there is some change in scenario.

BepiColombo is a joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury with challenging objectives regarding geophysics, geodesy and fundamental physics. In particular, the Mercury Orbiter Radio science Experiment (MORE) intends, as one of its goals, to perform a test of General Relativity. This can be done by measuring and constraining the parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameters to an accuracy significantly better than current one. In this work we perform a global numerical full-cycle simulation of the BepiColombo Radio Science Experiments (RSE) in a realistic scenario, focussing on the relativity experiment, solving simultaneously for all the parameters of interest for RSE in a global least squares fit within a constrained multiarc strategy. The results on the achievable accuracy for each PPN parameter will be presented and discussed, confirming the significant improvement to the actual knowledge of gravitation theory expected for the MORE relativity experiment. In particular, we will show that, including realistic systematic effects in the range observables, an accuracy of the order of 10 −6 can still be achieved in the Eddington parameter β and in the parameter α1, which accounts for preferred frame effects, while the only poorly determined parameter turns out to be ζ, which describes the temporal variations of the gravitational constant and the Sun mass.