Determination of Mercury's gravity and orientation through the BepiColombo's radio science experiment
Abstract
The Mercury Orbiter Radio science Experiment (MORE) is one of the investigations of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury. MORE is designed to estimate the Mercury's gravity field, its rotational state, and to perform tests of relativistic gravity. The state-of-the-art onboard and ground instrumentations enables simultaneous two- way links in X/X, X/Ka, and Ka/Ka, providing a range rate accuracy of 3 micron/s (at 1000 s of integration time) and range accuracy of 20 cm. The non-gravitational acceleration will be provided by a dedicated accelerometer (Italian Spring Accelerometer, ISA). We present the results of the numerical simulations of the Mercury's gravity field and orientation recovery. They were carried out considering the latest mission scenario and including the ISA in-flight calibration in the orbit determination process to reduce measurement errors due to electronic noise, thermal drift, and ageing. The results meet the science requirement of MORE.
- Publication:
-
European Planetary Science Congress
- Pub Date:
- September 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017EPSC...11..526M