On the space environment of Mercury Original Research Article

Since the rapid flybys of Mariner 10 in the late seventies, Mercury is known to have an intrinsic magnetic field that dominates the interactions of Mercury with its space environment. Even though important aspects of this interaction have been probed by the Mariner 10 instruments, crucial aspects remain unknown and unexplored. In particular there are fundamental uncertainties concerning the ion content of Mercuryʹs magnetosphere as well as issues related to the expected time-dependence of its magnetosphere due to the forcing by the interplanetary environment or due to substorm-like behavior. This paper will focus on a few specific topics that are related to the anticipated in situ investigations of MESSENGER and Bepi-Colombo later this decade.