BELA Laseraltimeter of the BepiColombo Mission

Abstract

BELA is the laseraltimeter of the ESA BepiColombo mission which was launched in 2018 and is currently on its way to Mercury and will arrive there in 2025, mission start is scheduled for early 2026. BELA is one of 11 instruments aboard the MPO (Mercury Planetary Orbiter) and the first laseraltimeter used on an interplanetary european mission. The main goal of BELA will be to provide a global topography map of Mercury, also to analyse the surface structure in terms of roughness and slopes, as well of measurements of the albedo.

Since launch in October 2018 BELA was operated several times, namely during the NECP (Near Earth Commisioning Phase), 11 CCO (Crusie Checkout), during Mercury Flyby 3 and for SSMM (Solid State Mass Memory) test.

We will present an overview of BELA, the main scientific goals, performance simulations and the results from operations so far.

This includes the analysis of the received TM data to check if the instruments worked correctly.

Also the poster will include the presentation of the used GRM (ground reference model) at DLR.