From the Back Cover
This book reviews the scientific objectives and the instrumentation of the space mission BepiColombo. BepiColombo is a joint mission between ESA and JAXA, to perform a comprehensive exploration of Mercury. Launched in October 2018, the spacecraft is now en route to Mercury and is scheduled to begin orbiting in 2026. Two orbiters have been sent to Mercury and will be put into dedicated, polar orbits around the planet. The Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO, nicknamed Mio after launch) will provide the information needed to understand the planet and its environment. The scientific objectives focus on a global characterization of Mercury through the investigation of its interior, surface, exosphere, and magnetosphere. In addition, instrumentation onboard BepiColombo will also be used to test Einstein's theory of general relativity.
The book contains a comprehensive description of the mission design and its history, it describes in detail the state-of the-art instruments and their individual scientific objectives. However, the fascination of the BepiColombo mission is also the fact, that two spacecraft are operating simulatonsly in orbits around Mercury. The interplay of the two spacecraft and its instruments and its benefits for gaining knowledge about this "mysterious' planet Mercury is also dealt within a few overview artictes on the expected science return.
Previously published in Space Science Reviews in the Topical Collection "The BepiColombo mission to Mercury"
Dr Johannes Benkhoff is a planetary physicist working in the field of computational modeling of the physics and chemistry of planetary bodies and comets. He got his PhD in 1992 at University of Münster, Germany. He obtained a scholarship from the German Science Foundation (DFG) to work for three years as a post-doc with Prof. Dr. Huebner at the SwRI institute in Texas, USA. After that he worked as a research scientist at the German Aerospace Centre, DLR, before he moved in 2004 to the European Space Agency, ESA-ESTEC in Noorwijk, Netherlands. He was CoI on Rosetta VIRTIS and MUPUS, CoI on the NASA Contour mission, and CoI on Venus Express. Since 2008 he is the ESA project scientist of the L class (cornerstone) mission BepiColombo operated in close collaboration with the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA.
Dr Go Murakami is an Assistant Professor working at Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). He is the Project Scientist of the ESA-JAXA joint mission BepiColombo for Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter: Mio. His science expertise is solar terrestrial plasma physics and planetary atmospheric science. He got his Ph.D by The University of Tokyo in 2011. Then he worked at JAXA/ISAS as a research fellow between 2011-2017 for developments and observations of Japanese ultraviolet space telescope Hisaki and the BepiColombo mission. In 2017 he got the current position at JAXA/ISAS.
Prof. Dr Ayako Matsuoka is the Director of Data Analysis Center for Geomagnetism and Space Magnetism, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University. She has worked on the magnetic field experiments as Principal Investigator (PI) in the Japanese NOZOMI and ARASE satellite projects, Co-PI for BepiColombo MIO, and Sub-PI for Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) and Comet Interceptor B1 Probe.
