Consequences of Charged Particle Precipitation onto High Latitude Permanently Shadowed Ice Water Deposits at Mercury
Abstract
When the solar wind with its embedded interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) interacts with a planetary magnetosphere, large scale magnetic structures known as cusps are formed, which are areas of focused magnetic field that converge toward the planetary surface at high northern and southern latitudes. Cusps are typically filled with energetic ions and electrons and because Mercury lacks an ionosphere or atmosphere this cusp plasma is funneled directly down onto the planetary surface. At Mercury, because the internal magnetic dipole is offset to the north by about 480 km, when the solar wind IMF is directed northward the northern cusp moves to very high latitudes > 75o, mapping directly into the northern permanently shadowed regions (PSR) where frozen water ice and organics reside, which can induce chemical radiation processing of the volatile ices into higher-order organics and dark refractory materials. Here, state of the art global kinetic simulations together with MESSENGER spacecraft data are used to characterize the fluxes and energies of precipitating particles in Mercury's magnetospheric cusp region and the resulting space plasma-surface interactions that take place at high northern latitudes in the PSRs. Results will be presented using current simulations and existing MESSENGER data, and data gaps expected to be filled by Bepi-Colombo observations will be discussed.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.P11B..06S
- Keywords:
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- 6235 Mercury;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 5405 Atmospheres;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS;
- 5430 Interiors;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS;
- 5443 Magnetospheres;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLID SURFACE PLANETS