Orbital evolution of the BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) in the gravity field of Mercury

Abstract

We analysed the influence of Mercurys gravity field on the orbit of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) which is the part of the European-Japanese mission BepiColombo. The gravity field of Mercury was determined from radio tracking data of the NASAs spacecraft MESSENGER. Due to the highly eccentric orbit of MESSENGER, the calculated gravitational harmonic coefficients are afflicted with uncertainties. Therefore, the orbital evolution of MPO is predictable but with some inaccuracy. For this reason, different plausible gravity fields were generated using a Monte Carlo Method. Furthermore, scale factors 1, 3, 5 and 10 were used for generating the gravity fields for the conservative consideration of the estimations for the harmonic coefficients. The simulations for prediction of the orbital evolution of MPO were performed using generating gravity fields with above-mentioned scale factors. The results of the simulations were analysed and compared with each other.