BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter Magnetometer Instrument

Objective

To measure the magnetic field vector along the MPO spacecraft orbit (accuracy typically: 0.3 nT, range +/- 2048nT) at sampling rates up to 10 vectors/s. Full orbit coverage (including operation during eclipse) is required for selected orbits.

Instrument Design

The magnetometer instrument consists of a spacecraft mounted electronics box and two boom mounted tri-axial fluxgate sensors. The instrument is being built by a consortium of three European institutes: the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics in Braunschweig, Germany, the Space Research Institute (Institut fur Weltraumforschung) in Graz, Austria and Imperial College London. The hardware contributions from each institute is shown in the instrument block diagram. Technical management of the MPO magnetometer is handled by the Space Research Institute. Imperial College is providing the instrument DC/DC converter, which converts the +28V supply from the spacecraft to the analogue and digital voltages required by the instrument, and the electronics box.