Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission

Kobayashi, Masanori; Shibata, Hiromi; Nogami, Ken’ichi; Fujii, Masayuki; Hasegawa, Sunao; Hirabayashi, Masatoshi; Hirai, Takayuki; Iwai, Takeo; Kimura, Hiroshi; Miyachi, Takashi; Nakamura, Maki; Ohashi, Hideo; Sasaki, Sho; Takechi, Seiji; Yano, Hajime; Krüger, Harald; Lohse, Ann-Kathrin; Srama, Ralf; Strub, Peter; Grün, Eberhard

doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00775-7

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Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission

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Krüger, Harald
Department Planets and Comets, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Max Planck Society;

Lohse, Ann-Kathrin
Department Planets and Comets, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Max Planck Society;

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Strub, Peter
Department Planets and Comets, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Kobayashi, M., Shibata, H., Nogami, K., Fujii, M., Hasegawa, S., Hirabayashi, M., et al. (2020). Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission. Space Science Reviews, 216: 144. doi:10.1007/s11214-020-00775-7.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-F52F-1

Abstract

An in-situ cosmic-dust instrument called the Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) had
been developed as a part of the science payload for the Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Or-
biter, MMO) stage of the joint European Space Agency (ESA)–JAXA Mercury-exploration
mission. The BepiColombo spacecraft was successfully launched by an Ariane 5 rocket on
October 20, 2018, and commissioning tests of the science payload were successfully com-
pleted in near-earth orbit before injection into a long journey to Mercury. MDM has a sensor
consisting of four plates of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which converts the mechanical stress (or strain) induced by dust-particle impacts into electrical signals. Af-
ter the commencement of scientiﬁc operations, MDM will measure the impact momentum
at which dust particles in orbit around the Sun collide with the sensor and record the ar-
rival direction. This paper provides basic information concerning the MDM instrument and
its predicted scientiﬁc operation as a future reference for scientiﬁc articles concerning the
MDM’s observational data.