Related papers: Mercury's spin-orbit model and signature of its dy…
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…
One major objective of MESSENGER and BepiColombo spatial missions is to accurately measure Mercury's rotation and its obliquity in order to obtain constraints on internal structure of the planet. Which is the obliquity's dynamical behavior…
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…
Mercury is entrapped in a 3:2 resonance: it rotates on its axis three times for every two revolutions it makes around the Sun. It is generally accepted that this is due to the large value of the eccentricity of its orbit. However, the…
This HDR-thesis is devoted to the study of the rotation of the natural satellites of the giant planets and of Mercury. These bodies have a resonant rotation. Most of the natural satellites rotate synchronously, showing the same hemisphere…
The rotation of Mercury is presently captured in a 3/2 spin-orbit resonance with the orbital mean motion. The capture mechanism is well understood as the result of tidal interactions with the Sun combined with planetary perturbations.…
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…
While it is accepted that the eccentricity of Mercury (0.206) favours entrapment into the 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, open is the question how and when the capture took place. A recent work by Makarov (2012) has demonstrated that trapping…
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…
Mercury is the unique known planet that is situated in a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance nowadays. Observations and models converge to the same conclusion: the planet is presently deeply trapped in the resonance and situated at the Cassini state…
The objective of this paper is to study the tidally locked 3:2 spin-orbit resonance of Mercury around the Sun. In order to achieve this goal, the effective potential energy that determines the spinning motion of an ellipsoidal planet around…
The dynamical evolution of terrestrial planets resembling Mercury in the vicinity of spin-orbit resonances is investigated using comprehensive harmonic expansions of the tidal torque taking into account the frequency-dependent quality…
The present obliquity of Mercury is very low (less than 0.1 degree), which led previous studies to always adopt a nearly zero obliquity during the planet's past evolution. However, the initial orientation of Mercury's rotation axis is…
A major goal of the BepiColombo mission to Mercury is the determination of the structure and state of Mercury's interior. Here the BepiColombo rotation experiment has been simulated in order to assess the ability to attain the mission goals…
The planet Mercury is locked in a spin-orbit resonance where it rotates three times about its spin axis for every two orbits about the Sun. The current explanation for this unique state assumes that the initial rotation of this planet was…
We present a comprehensive statistical study of the radial evolution of solar wind turbulence near Mercury's orbit using long-term magnetic field measurements from the MESSENGER mission. Owing to Mercury's highly elliptical orbit and the…
This paper deals with the rotation and figure evolution of a planet near the 3/2 spin-orbit resonance and the exploration of a new formulation of the creep tide theory (Folonier et al. 2018). This new formulation is composed by a system of…
The radioscience experiment is one of the on board experiment of the Mercury ESA mission BepiColombo that will be launched in 2014. The goals of the experiment are to determine the gravity field of Mercury and its rotation state, to…
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…
An analysis based on the direct torque equations including tidal dissipation and a viscous core-mantle coupling is used to determine the damping time scales of O(10^5) years for free precession of the spin about the Cassini state and free…