Prospects for measuring Mercury's tidal Love number h2 with the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter
| Autor: | Robin Thor, Reinald Kallenbach, Jürgen Oberst, Gregor Steinbrügge, A. Di Ruscio, Paolo Cappuccio, Luciano Iess, Alexander Stark, Ulrich R. Christensen, H. Hussmann |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Planets and satellites: individual: Mercury planets and satellites: interiors planets and satellites: surfaces chemistry.chemical_element Astrophysics Tides 01 natural sciences Planet 0103 physical sciences Altimeter 010303 astronomy & astrophysics 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Physics Spacecraft business.industry Inner core Astronomy and Astrophysics Mercury Geodesy Mercury (element) BELA chemistry Space and Planetary Science BepiColombo Mission Love number Solar System Orbit determination business Dynamo |
| DOI: | 10.1051/0004-6361/201936517 |
| Popis: | Context.The Love numberh2describes the radial tidal displacements of Mercury’s surface and allows constraints to be set on the inner core size when combined with the potential Love numberk2. Knowledge of Mercury’s inner core size is fundamental to gaining insights into the planet’s thermal evolution and dynamo working principle. The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) is currently cruising to Mercury as part of the BepiColombo mission and once it is in orbit around Mercury, it will acquire precise measurements of the planet’s surface topography, potentially including variability that is due to tidal deformation.Aims.We use synthetic measurements acquired using BELA to assess how accurately Mercury’s tidal Love numberh2can be determined by laser altimetry.Methods.We generated realistic, synthetic BELA measurements, including instrument performance, orbit determination, as well as uncertainties in spacecraft attitude and Mercury’s libration. We then retrieved Mercury’sh2and global topography from the synthetic data through a joint inversion.Results.Our results suggest thath2can be determined with an absolute accuracy of ± 0.012, enabling a determination of Mercury’s inner core size to ± 150 km given the inner core is sufficiently large (>800 km). We also show that the uncertainty ofh2depends strongly on the assumed scaling behavior of the topography at small scales and on the periodic misalignment of the instrument. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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