Mercury's Magnetic Field: Active, Thermoelectric, or Decaying Dynamo or Crustal Remanence? - The MESSENGER Magnetic Field Investigation

The discovery of Mercury's intrinsic magnetic field in 1974 by Mariner 10 was a surprise because the planet's size, thermal state, and angular momentum seemed to rule out the possibility of an active dynamo. Additional encounters of Mercury by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in 1975 confirmed the initial results and allowed the estimation of the planetary magnetic dipole moment to within perhaps a factor of two. This discovery prompted a variety of suggestions for the source of the intrinsic field. The presence of sufficient sulfur in the outer core would allow a thin fluid outer core to persist to the present and perhaps serve as host to a thin-shell dynamo. Recent dynamo simulations under conditions appropriate to Mercury support this possibility and point to aspects of the external field that may be observable from an orbiting spacecraft. Remanent magnetization of the crust and mantle by a now-dead core dynamo field was proposed as an alternative explanation of the Mariner 10 observations in 1976, but this suggestion has been questioned on the grounds that the characteristic time between polarity reversals of a core dynamo field is likely much less than the timescale for acquisition of thermoremanence by the cooling crust and upper mantle. The discovery by Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) in 1997 of an intensely magnetized Martian crust added fuel to this debate, because the Mariner 10 measurements can be reproduced if Mercury's crust is approximated by a magnetized shell having an intrinsic magnetization of the same order of magnitude as that suggested for Mars by the MGS measurements. The MESSENGER magnetic field investigation is designed to address this and other fundamental questions regarding the nature and origin of Mercury's internal field as well as the planet's thermal history. We present here a summary of the MESSENGER magnetic field investigation goals and an assessment of observations acquired during the spacecraft's Earth flyby on 2 August 2005.