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Mercury Surface Element

Mercury Surface Element

Summary

The Mercury Surface Element (MSE), a simple short-lived probe, will study in-situ the physical properties of the surface. It will be deployed from the Magnetospheric Orbiter into an impact orbit to a high latitude landing site where the environmental conditions are less severe.

MSE can carry up to 7 kg of scientific hardware and additional, or alternative, instruments can be included in the model payload. Instruments visualised for MSE comprise a descent camera, a panorama camera, a seismometer, a magnetometer, an alpha-X-ray detector for chemical elements, and a package to assess the temperature, heat capacity, density and hardness of Mercury's 'soil'.

The MSE with the two deployment devices: the micro-rover (left) and the mole (bottom)

A soil-penetrating device (MDD) and a micro-rover (MMR) are required for the deployment of some instruments. The MDD (mole) is derived from the Russian Mars programme and reaches depths of several metres in a regolith. A rover attached to a tether can deploy instruments at selected sites several metres away from the lander.

Table of instruments

Acronym Instrument Deployment
AXS Alpha X-ray spectrometer By Mole
HP³ Heat flow and physical properties package By Micro-rover
SEISMO Seismometer None
CLAM-D Descent camera None
CLAM-S Surface camera None
MLMAG Mercury lander magnetometer None
MDD Mole deployment device -
MMR Mercury micro-rover -
 

Instrument objectives

  HP³ AXS CLAM-D CLAM-S MLMAG SEISMO
Morphology     X X    
Structure X       X X
Composition X X        
Mineralogy X   X X    

The two deployment devices MDD and MMR will deploy the HP³ and AXS instrument respectively.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
28-Mar-2024 23:21 UT

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https://sci.esa.int/s/wxP93vw

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