Active measurement of the thermal electron density and temperature on the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter of the BepiColombo mission

Trotignon, J. G.; Béghin, C.; Lagoutte, D.; Mīchau, J. L.; Matsumoto, Hiroshi; Kojima, Hirotsugu; Hashimoto, Katsushi; Kasaba, Yasumasa; Blomberg, Lars G.; Lebreton, Jean‐Pierre; Masson, A.; Hamelin, Michel; Pottelette, R.

doi:10.1016/j.asr.2006.03.031

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Magnetospheric Orbiter (MIO/MMO) of the BepiColombo mission. The PWI/AM 2 P experiment will measure the plasma bulk properties of the Mercury magnetospheric and Solar wind plasma such as the electron density (in the 0.02 to 180 cm −3 range, corresponding to f pe from 0.7 to 120 kHz) and the electron temperature, in a range which depends on plasma conditions (Trotignon et al, 2006). The BepiColombo spacecraft has been launched successfully in October 2018, for an interplanetary cruise phase of 7.2 years (until December 2025) with one Earth flyby, two Venus and six Mercury flybys before the nominal mission science operations performed for one and a half Earth year (about 6 Hermean years) and a planned extension of one Earth year, corresponding to 4 extra Hermean years).…”

Section: Application To the Bepicolombo Mutual Impedance Probe Am 2 Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Mutual Impedance Probe (MIP), as a part of the Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC), on board the Rosetta orbiter (Trotignon et al, 2007), measured the electron density in the ionosphere of the comet 67P/Churuymov-Gerasimenko (Henri et al, 2017). The Active Measurement of Mercury's Plasma (AM 2 P) instrument (Trotignon et al, 2006) from the Plasma Wave Investigation (PWI) is currently onboard the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MIO/MMO) of the BepiColombo mission successfully launched in October 2018. After the 7.2 years cruise phase, this experiment will constrain the plasma bulk properties in the Hermean magnetosphere.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Especially, we study the robustness of the plasma density measurement through the mutual impedance method in the presence of energetic electrons. This new model is applied to the mutual impedance experiment PWI/AM 2 P onboard the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MIO/MMO) of the BepiColombo mission (Trotignon et al, 2006;Benkhoff et al, 2010) to prepare the future calibration of the experiment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mutual Impedance Probe in Collisionless Unmagnetized Plasmas With Suprathermal Electrons—Application to BepiColombo

Gilet

Henri

Wattieaux

et al. 2019

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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Context: Mutual impedance experiments are active electric probes providing in-situ space plasma measurements. Such active experiments consist of a set of electric antennas used as transmitter(s) and receivers(s) through which various dielectric properties of the plasma can be probed, giving therefore access to key plasma parameters such as, for instance, the electron density or the electron temperature. Since the beginning of the space exploration, such active probes have been launched and operated in Earth's ionospheric and magnetospheric plasmas. More recently and in the coming years, mutual impedance probes have been and will be operated onboard exploratory planetary missions, such as Rosetta, BepiColombo and JUICE, to probe the cometary plasma of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Hermean and the Jovian magnetospheres, respectively.

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Section: Application To the Bepicolombo Mutual Impedance Probe Am 2 Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mutual Impedance Probe in Collisionless Unmagnetized Plasmas With Suprathermal Electrons—Application to BepiColombo

Gilet

Henri

Wattieaux

et al. 2019

Front. Astron. Space Sci.

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“…Originally intended for geological and archaeological prospection, mutual impedance probes have been adapted (Storey et al 1969) and successfully used in space plasma investigations since the 1970s (Beghin & Debrie 1972;Décréau et al 1978;Beghin et al 1982;Bahnsen et al 1986;Trotignon et al 2007), and it is planned to use them for future space missions such as BepiColombo to the planet Mercury (Trotignon et al 2006) or the Jupiter icy moons explorer (JUICE). This active electrostatic probe introduces a sine wave electrical current with a constant amplitude in the probe surroundings, and it measures the induced electrical potential drop between two receiving electrodes (Storey 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

RPC-MIP observations at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko explained by a model including a sheath and two populations of electrons

Wattieaux

Gilet²,

Henri³

et al. 2019

A&A

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The response of the mutual impedance probe RPC-MIP on board Rosetta orbiter electrostatically modeled considering an unmagnetized and collisionless plasma with two Maxwellian electron populations. A vacuum sheath surrounding the probe was considered in our model in order to take the ion sheath into account that is located around the probe, which is immersed in the cometary plasma. For the first time, the simulated results are consistent with the data collected around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P), but strong discrepancies were identified with the previous simulations that neglected the plasma sheath around the probe. We studied the influence of the sheath thickness and of the electron populations. This work helps to better understand the initially unexpected responses of the mutual impedance probe that were acquired during the Rosetta mission. It suggests that two electron populations exist in the cometary plasma of 67P.

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“…Mutual impedance probe experiments have been used in various ionized environments, from ionospheric to interplanetary plasmas, to constrain plasma parameters such as the electron density, the electron temperature, and the plasma drift velocity. From the 1970s, such experiments have been launched on the ionospheric rocket CISASPE (Beghin & Debrie, 1972), as well as satellites such as Geostationary Earth Orbit Satellite 1 (or GEOS-1) (Décréau et al, 1978), ARCAD-3 (Beghin et al, 1982), VIKING (Bahnsen et al, 1986), Rosetta (Trotignon et al, 2007), and are planned for future space missions: BepiColombo (Trotignon et al, 2006) and JUICE. These experiments included an active electrical probe usually made of two receiving and two transmitting electric antennas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrostatic Potential Radiated by a Pulsating Charge in a Two‐Electron Temperature Plasma

et al. 2017

Self Cite

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Mutual impedance experiments have been developed to constrain the plasma bulk properties, such as density and temperature, of ionospheric and later space plasmas, through the electric coupling between an emitter and a receiver electric antennas. So far, the analytical modeling of such instruments has enabled to treat ionospheric plasmas, where charged particles are usually well characterized by Maxwellian electron distributions. With the growth of planetary exploration, mutual impedance experiments are or will be used to constrain space plasma bulk properties. Space plasmas are usually out of local thermodynamic equilibrium; therefore, new methods to calibrate and analyze mutual impedance experiments are now required in such non‐Maxwellian plasmas. To this purpose, this work aims at modeling the electric potential generated in a two‐electron temperature plasma by a pulsating point charge. A numerical method is developed for the computation of the electrostatic potential in a sum of Maxwellian plasmas. After validating the method, the results are used to build synthetic mutual impedance spectra and quantify the effect of a warm electron population on mutual impedance experiments, in order to illustrate how the method could be applied for recent and future planetary space missions, such as Rosetta, BepiColombo, and JUICE. In particular, we show how it enables to separate the densities and temperatures of two different electron populations using in situ measurements from the RPC‐MIP mutual impedance experiment on board Rosetta.

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Active measurement of the thermal electron density and temperature on the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter of the BepiColombo mission

Cited by 15 publications

References 13 publications

Mutual Impedance Probe in Collisionless Unmagnetized Plasmas With Suprathermal Electrons—Application to BepiColombo

Mutual Impedance Probe in Collisionless Unmagnetized Plasmas With Suprathermal Electrons—Application to BepiColombo

RPC-MIP observations at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko explained by a model including a sheath and two populations of electrons

Electrostatic Potential Radiated by a Pulsating Charge in a Two‐Electron Temperature Plasma

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