Related papers: The reference frames of Mercury after MESSENGER

The current knowledge of Mercury orbit has mainly been gained by direct radar ranging obtained from the 60s to 1998 and by five Mercury flybys made by Mariner 10 in the 70s, and MESSENGER made in 2008 and 2009. On March 18, 2011, MESSENGER…

We used recently produced Solar System ephemerides, which incorporate two years of ranging observations to the MESSENGER spacecraft, to extract the secular orbital elements for Mercury and associated uncertainties. As Mercury is in a stable…

The 3:2 spin-orbit resonance between the rotational and orbital motions of Mercury results from a functional dependance on a tidal friction adding to a non-zero eccentricity with a permanent asymmetry in the equatorial plane of the planet.…

The X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft provided measurements of major-element ratios across Mercury's surface. We present global maps of Mg/Si, Al/Si, S/Si, Ca/Si, and Fe/Si derived from XRS data collected throughout…

We analyze radio tracking data obtained during 1311 orbits of the MESSENGER spacecraft in the period March 2011 to April 2014. A least-squares minimization of the residuals between observed and computed values of two-way range and Doppler…

The Lense-Thirring precession of the longitude of perihelion of Mercury, as predicted by general relativity by using the value of the Sun's angular momentum S = 190 x 10^39 kg m^2 s^-1 from helioseismology, is -2.0 milliarcseconds per…

We use a nonstationary generalization of the higher-order structure function technique to investigate statistical properties of the magnetic field fluctuations recorded by MESSENGER spacecraft during its first flyby (01/14/2008) through the…

As an end-member of terrestrial planet formation, Mercury holds unique clues about the original distribution of elements in the earliest stages of solar system development and how planets and exoplanets form and evolve in close proximity to…

We describe the current state of knowledge about Mercury's interior structure. We review the available observational constraints, including mass, size, density, gravity field, spin state, composition, and tidal response. These data enable…

This review summarizes the research of Mercury's magnetosphere in the Post-MESSENGER era and compares its dynamics to those in other planetary magnetospheres, especially to those in Earth's magnetosphere. This review starts by introducing…

The MESSENGER spacecraft conducted its first flyby of Mercury on 14th January 2008, followed by two subsequent encounters on 6th October 2008 and 29th September 2009, prior to Mercury orbit insertion on 18th March 2011. We have reviewed…

Mercury is the target of two space missions: MESSENGER (NASA) which orbit insertion is planned for March 2011, and ESA/JAXA BepiColombo, that should be launched in 2014. Their instruments will observe the surface of the planet with a high…

To characterize the meteoroid environment around Mercury and its contribution to the planet's exosphere, we combined four distinctive sources of meteoroids in the solar system: main-belt asteroids, Jupiter family comets, Halley-type comets,…

The motion of Mercury using numerical methods in the framework of a model including only the non-relativistic Newtonian gravitational interactions of the solar system, 9 planets in translation (including Pluto) around the sun has been…

Due to its relatively large eccentricity and proximity to the Sun, Mercury's orbital motion provides one of the best solar-system tests of relativistic gravity. We emphasize the number of feasible relativistic gravity tests that can be…

We review the results from {\it Mariner 10} regarding Mercury's gravity field and the results from radar ranging regarding topography. We discuss the implications of improving these results, including a determination of the polar component,…

We construct a set of reference frames for description of the orbital and rotational motion of the Moon. We use a scalar-tensor theory of gravity depending on two parameters of the parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) formalism and utilize the…

Our knowledge of the properties of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) in the inner heliosphere is constrained by the relative lack of plasma observations between Sun and 1 AU. In this work, we present a comprehensive catalog of 47 CMEs measured…

The upcoming space missions, MESSENGER and BepiColombo with onboard instrumentation capable of measuring the rotational parameters stimulate the objective to reach an accurate theory of the rotational motion of Mercury. For obtaining the…

Mercury's magnetosphere is known to be affected by enhanced ram pressures and magnetic fields inside interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). Here we report detailed observations of an ICME compressing Mercury's dayside magnetosphere…