The Mercury Orbiter Radio Science Experiment (MORE) of the ESA mission BepiColombo will provide an accurate estimation of Mercury’s gravity field and rotational state, improved tests of general relativity, and a novel deep space navigation system. The key experimental setup entails a highly stable, multi-frequency radio link in X and Ka band, enabling two-way range rate measurements of 3 micron/s at nearly all solar elongation angles. In addition, a high chip rate, pseudo-noise ranging system has already been tested at 1-2 cm accuracy. The tracking data will be used together with the measurements of the Italian Spring Accelerometer to provide a pseudo drag free environment for the data analysis. We summarize the existing literature published over the past years and report on the overall configuration of the experiment, its operations in cruise and at Mercury, and the expected scientific results.
Gravity, geodesy and fundamental physics with BepiColombo’s MORE investigation / Iess, L.; Asmar, S. W.; Cappuccio, P.; Cascioli, G.; De Marchi, F.; di Stefano, I.; Genova, A.; Ashby, N.; Barriot, J. P.; Bender, P.; Benedetto, C.; Border, J. S.; Budnik, F.; Ciarcia, S.; Damour, T.; Dehant, V.; Di Achille, G.; Di Ruscio, A.; Fienga, A.; Formaro, R.; Klioner, S.; Konopliv, A.; Lemaître, A.; Longo, F.; Mercolino, M.; Mitri, G.; Notaro, V.; Olivieri, A.; Paik, M.; Palli, A.; Schettino, G.; Serra, D.; Simone, L.; Tommei, G.; Tortora, P.; Van Hoolst, T.; Vokrouhlický, D.; Watkins, M.; Wu, X.; Zannoni, M.. - In: SPACE SCIENCE REVIEWS. - ISSN 0038-6308. - 217:1(2021), pp. 1-39. [10.1007/s11214-021-00800-3]
Gravity, geodesy and fundamental physics with BepiColombo’s MORE investigation
Iess, L.
Primo
;Cappuccio, P.;Cascioli, G.;De Marchi, F.;di Stefano, I.;Genova, A.;Di Ruscio, A.;Mercolino, M.;Notaro, V.;
2021
Abstract
The Mercury Orbiter Radio Science Experiment (MORE) of the ESA mission BepiColombo will provide an accurate estimation of Mercury’s gravity field and rotational state, improved tests of general relativity, and a novel deep space navigation system. The key experimental setup entails a highly stable, multi-frequency radio link in X and Ka band, enabling two-way range rate measurements of 3 micron/s at nearly all solar elongation angles. In addition, a high chip rate, pseudo-noise ranging system has already been tested at 1-2 cm accuracy. The tracking data will be used together with the measurements of the Italian Spring Accelerometer to provide a pseudo drag free environment for the data analysis. We summarize the existing literature published over the past years and report on the overall configuration of the experiment, its operations in cruise and at Mercury, and the expected scientific results.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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