Project
Expert Suport to BERM & RADEM units

Code ESA: 4000137865/22/ES/JD

Beneficiary Entity

LIP - Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas

Project summary

BepiColombo is Europe's first mission to Mercury. It has been defined as a collaboration between ESA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), executed under ESA leadership. The mission comprises two spacecraft: the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO), built by ESA, and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), built by JAXA, which are dedicated to the detailed study of the planet and its magnetosphere respectively. Their orbits have therefore been optimised accordingly.The MPO is a three-axis-stabilized and nadir-pointing spacecraft designed for an operational lifetime of one Earth year (with a possible extension of one year). The MPO will be placed in an inertially fixed polar orbit; the spacecraft has one axis aligned with the nadir direction to allow continuous nadir observation of the planet. The MPO’s 2.3-hour low-eccentricity orbit will provide excellent spatial resolution over the entire planet’s surface. The MPO science payload will investigate Mercury’s interior, surface composition and morphology, intrinsic magnetic field, the composition of the exosphere and the coupling between all of these aspects.The launch of the MPO-MMO composite took place in October 2018 on an Ariane 5 from Kourou. Approximately 7 years later, after two Venus and four Mercury flybys, the spacecraft will perform its final approach to Mercury. BepiColombo will arrive at Mercury in December 2025, and gather data during a 1-year nominal mission, with a possible 1-year extension.Outside of the protective layers of Earth’s atmosphere, Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) and solar energetic particles (SEP), consisting of electrons, protons, atomic nuclei (and also high-energy photons) are constantly irradiating all components of BepiColombo. Therefore, following common practice, the BepiColombo Environment Radiation Monitor (BERM) has been installed on the MPO in order to measure the influx of energetic particles during cruise and while in orbit around Mercury.In addition to the task of monitoring the radiation environment of the spacecraft, the data collected by the BERM instrument can provide additional measurements for other particle instruments on board MPO (i.e. SIXS-P), be used to augment the quality of the Mercury Gamma and Neutron Spectrometer (MGNS) and to support instrument maintenance operations (i.e. for MIXS). In order to fulfil these functions, the raw data from the instrument need to be calibrated as accurately as possible.During the near-earth commissioning phase (NECP) after the launch of BepiColombo, it became apparent that the instrument is suffering from internal noise issues which had been overlooked during on-ground testing activities. While the Instrument is performing well from an engineering point of view, the data quality is clearly impacted by internal noise which is interfering with the regular measurements of energetic particles by triggering the particle recognition and energy reconstruction process erroneously. This leads to a large amount of “false” particle detections which, although mostly discarded by internal quality checks, reduce the sensitivity of BERM for the actual radiation environment.

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Support under

Reforçar a investigação, o desenvolvimento tecnológico e a inovação

Region of Intervention

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