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1.
《Planetary and Space Science》2007,55(11):1614-1621
Many ground-based observations of Na in Mercury's surface-bounded exosphere have been made and continued to be made in an effort to understand the sources, sinks, and distribution of Na around Mercury. These time consuming and costly efforts are made to better understand the physical processes on and around Mercury. A big step would be to discover an actual source of the Na from Mercury's crust because it is already known that meteorites and comets provide Na to the exosphere through impact. We provide ground-based CCD imagery obtained with small ground-based telescopes that show bright albedo features at locations coincident with enhanced Na emissions in Mercury's exosphere. We suggest these locations are sources for Na. We also provide a mechanism to test this hypothesis using in situ observations by instruments on the MESSENGER spacecraft during the three fly bys of Mercury that will occur in 2008 and 2009, and during the orbital mission which begins in 2011. It is necessary to prove that Na is delivered to the exosphere from one or more crustal source regions before exospheric Na can be used as a measure of the volatile content of Mercury used to infer formation and evolution from the primitive solar nebula. The same applies to other elements such as K which is known to be in Mercury's exosphere and S which is postulated to be present. We expound on the impact that the discovery of one or more source regions from Mercury's crust would have on our ability to discern between the three leading models of Mercury's formation and crustal evolution.  相似文献   

2.
G. Cremonese  M. Bruno  S. Marchi 《Icarus》2005,177(1):122-128
Meteoroid impact has been shown to be a source of sodium, and most likely of other elements, on the Moon. The same process could be also relevant for Mercury. In this work we calculate the vapor and neutral Na production rates on Mercury due to the impacts of meteoroids in the radius range of 10−8-10−1 m. We limit our calculations to this size range, because meteoroids with radius larger than 10−1 m have not to be found important for the daily production of the exosphere. This work is based on a new dynamical model of the meteoroid flux at the heliocentric distance of Mercury, regarding objects in the size range 10−2-10−1 m. This size range, never investigated before, is not affected by nongravitational forces, such as the Poynting-Robertson effect, which is dominant for particles smaller than 10−2 m. In order to evaluate the release of neutral sodium atoms also for smaller meteoroids we have used the distribution reported by M.J. Cintala [1992. Impact-induced thermal effects in the lunar and mercurian regoliths. J. Geophys. Res. 97, 947-973] calculated for particle size range 10−8-10−3 m. We have extrapolated this distribution up to 10−2 m and we have based the impact calculations on a new surface composition assuming 90% plagioclase and 10% pyroxene. The results of our model are that (i) the total mass of vapor produced by the impact of meteoroids in the size range 10−8-10−1 m is 4.752×108 g per year, and (ii) the production rate of neutral sodium atoms is 1.5×1022 s−1.  相似文献   

3.
Carl B. Pilcher 《Icarus》1979,37(3):559-574
A variety of processes have been examined to determine their impact on water loss from Io and the formation of an anhydrous surface. Thermal escape, photolysis, and gas-phase charged particle interactions are shown to be unimportant in this regard. Recent laboratory experiments have shown that charged-particle sputtering is likely to be an effective mechanism for the removal of water ice from Io's surface. Vaporization of ice by meteoroid impacts may also be significant. The overall sputtering rate appears to be sufficiently high that the formation of a substantial regolith due to meteoroid bombardment will be prevented. However, meteoroid bombardment is probably capable of maintaining a thin (? 500 μm overturned surface layer from which all free water has been removed by sputtering. Alternatively, a thick anhydrous surface layer may have formed on Io as the result of primordial heating. The survival of such a layer to the present implies the absence of subsequent water evolution onto the surface of the satellite.  相似文献   

4.
《Planetary and Space Science》2007,55(11):1541-1556
The exosphere of Mercury has been the object of many investigations and speculations regarding its composition, formation, depletion and dynamics. While vapourization of Mercurian surface materials by meteorite impacts has been often considered to be a less important contributor to the exosphere than other potential processes, larger objects coming from the Main Asteroid Belt could cause high local and transient enhancements in the density of the exosphere. Vapourization by such impacts is an almost stoichiometric process, and thus would contain valuable information about the surface composition. We investigate some exospheric effects of impact vapourization for meteorites with radii of 1, 10 cm, and 1 m, with particular reference to the missions that will explore Mercury during the next decade (MESSENGER and BepiColombo). Because of their higher probabilities, impacts of objects in the two smaller size ranges will surely occur during the lifetimes of the two missions. The enhancement of the exospheric density on the dayside of Mercury would be appreciable for the 10-cm and 1-m meteorites (some orders of magnitude, especially for Al, Mg, Si, and Ca). Such events could allow detection, for the first time, of refractory species like Al, Mg, and Si, which are expected to exist on the surface but have not yet been detected in the exosphere. Ca could be detectable in all cases, even if produced by impacting objects as small as 1 cm in radius. The lower exospheric background on the night side should allow easier identification of Na and K produced by impulsive events, even if their generally high background values make this eventuality less likely.  相似文献   

5.
Helium concentrations in the Martian atmosphere are estimated assuming that the helium production on Mars, comparable to its production on Earth, via the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, is in steady state equilibrium with its thermal escape. Although non-thermal losses would tend to reduce the estimated concentrations, these concentrations are not necessarily an upper limit since higher production rates and/or a possibly lower effective exospheric temperature over the solar activity cycle could increase them to even higher values. The computed helium concentration at the Martian exobase (200 km) is 8 × 106 atoms cm?3. Through the lower exosphere, the computed helium concentrations are 30–200 times greater than the Mariner-measured atomic hydrogen concentrations. It follows that helium may be the predominant constituent in the Martian lower exosphere and may well control the orbital lifetime of Mars-orbiting spacecraft. The estimated helium mixing ratio is greater at the Martian turbopause than at the terrestrial turbopause, and the helium column density in the lower Martian atmosphere may be comparable to that on Earth.  相似文献   

6.
NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office has implemented a program to monitor the Moon for meteoroid impacts from the Marshall Space Flight Center. Using off-the-shelf telescopes and video equipment, the Moon is monitored for as many as 10 nights per month, depending on weather. Custom software automatically detects flashes which are confirmed by a second telescope, photometrically calibrated using background stars, and published on a website for correlation with other observations. Hypervelocity impact tests at the Ames Vertical Gun Range facility have begun to determine the luminous efficiency and ejecta characteristics. The purpose of this research is to define the impact ejecta environment for use by lunar spacecraft designers of the Constellation manned lunar program. The observational techniques and preliminary results will be discussed. The U.S. Government's right to retain a non-exclusive, royalty-free license in and to any copyright is acknowledged.  相似文献   

7.
This is a study of the kinetics and transport of hot oxygen atoms in the transition region (from the thermosphere to the exosphere) of the Martian upper atmosphere. It is assumed that the source of the hot oxygen atoms is the transfer of momentum and energy in elastic collisions between thermal atmospheric oxygen atoms and the high-energy protons and hydrogen atoms precipitating onto the Martian upper atmosphere from the solar-wind plasma. The distribution functions of suprathermal oxygen atoms by the kinetic energy are calculated. It is shown that the exosphere is populated by a large number of suprathermal oxygen atoms with kinetic energies up to the escape energy 2 eV; i.e., a hot oxygen corona is formed around Mars. The transfer of energy from the precipitating solar-wind plasma protons and hydrogen atoms to the thermal oxygen atoms leads to the formation of an additional nonthermal escape flux of atomic oxygen from the Martian atmosphere. The precipitation-induced escape flux of hot oxygen atoms may become dominant under the conditions of extreme solar events, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, as shown by recent observations onboard NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft (Jakosky et al., 2015).  相似文献   

8.
A model of planetary neutral and ion-exospheres in the solar wind is formulated for weak or lunar like solar-wind interaction with a planet. The neutral exosphere model allows for density and temperature variations and for rotation at the exobase. The ion-exosphere is produced by ionization of the neutral exosphere in the solar wind and its density distribution is obtained by solving the continuity equation in the drift approximation. Applying to Mercury a surface temperature distribution inferred from infra-red data and a vanishing bound neutral flux at the base, He and He+ density distributions are found. When the He atmosphere of Mercury is due entirely to the surface bombardment by solar wind He++, the resulting He+ density is found to vary from 1.5 × 10−1 to 10−3 cm−3 over the range 1.5–5 planetocentric radii on the dayside. These densities are found to be detectable by typical solar-wind plasma instruments. The possible effects of cyclotron-resonant scattering by interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations are examined and shown to be negligible. An electromagnetic plasma instability, triggered by the birth of ions in the exosphere, is shown to be important for the thermalization of the energy mode transverse to the interplanetary magnetic field, allowing more ions to be detected by solar-wind ion probes.  相似文献   

9.
F. Leblanc  R.E. Johnson 《Icarus》2003,164(2):261-281
Mercury's neutral sodium exosphere is simulated using a comprehensive 3D Monte Carlo model following sodium atoms ejected from Mercury's surface by thermal desorption, photon stimulated desorption, micro-meteoroid vaporization and solar wind sputtering. The evolution of the sodium surface density with respect to Mercury's rotation and its motion around the Sun is taken into account by considering enrichment processes due to surface trapping of neutrals and ions and depletion of the sodium available for ejection from the surfaces of grains. The change in the sodium exosphere is calculated during one Mercury year taking into account the variations in the solar radiation pressure, the photo-ionization frequency, the solar wind density, the photon and meteoroid flux intensities, and the surface temperature. Line-of-sight column densities at different phase angles, the supply rate of new sodium, average neutral and ion losses over a Mercury year, surface density distribution and the importance of the different processes of ejection are discussed in this paper. The sodium surface density distribution is found to become significantly nonuniform from day to night sides, from low to high latitudes and from morning to afternoon because of rapid depletion of sodium atoms in the surfaces of grains mainly driven by thermal depletion. The shape of the exosphere, as it would be seen from the Earth, changes drastically with respect to Mercury's heliocentric position. High latitude column density maxima are related to maxima in the sodium surface concentration at high latitudes in Mercury's surface and are not necessarily due to solar wind sputtering. The ratio between the sodium column density on the morning side of Mercury's exosphere and the sodium column density on the afternoon side is consistent with the conclusions of Sprague et al. (1997, Icarus 129, 506-527). The model, which has no fitting parameters, shows surprisingly good agreement with recent observations of Potter et al. (2002, Meteor. Planet. Sci. 8, 3357-3374) successfully explaining their velocity and column density profiles vs. heliocentric distance. Comparison with this data allows us to constrain the supply rate of new sodium atoms to the surface. We also discuss the possible origins of the strong high latitude emissions (Potter and Morgan, 1990, Science 248, 835-838; 1997a, Adv. Space Res. 19, 1571-1576; 1997b, Planet. Space Sci. 45, 95-100; Sprague et al., 1998, Icarus 135, 60-68) and the strong variations of the total content of the sodium exosphere on short (Potter et al., 1999, Planet. Space Sci. 47, 1441-1449) and long time scales (Sprague et al., 1997, Icarus 129, 506-527).  相似文献   

10.
The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Meteoroid Stream Model simulates particle ejection and subsequent evolution from comets in order to provide meteor shower forecasts to spacecraft operators for hazard mitigation and planning purposes. The model, previously detailed in Moser and Cooke (Earth Moon Planets 95, 141 (2004)), has recently been updated; the changes include the implementation of the RADAU integrator, an improved planetary treatment, and the inclusion of general relativistic effects in the force function. The results of these updates are investigated with respect to various meteoroid streams and the outcome presented.  相似文献   

11.
The discovery measurements of Mercury's exospheric magnesium, obtained by the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) probe during its second Mercury flyby, are modeled to constrain the source and loss processes for this neutral species. Fits to a Chamberlain exosphere reveal that at least two source temperatures are required to reconcile the distribution of magnesium measured far from and near the planet: a hot ejection process at the equivalent temperature of several tens of thousands of degrees K, and a competing, cooler source at temperatures as low as 400 K. For the energetic component, our models indicate that the column abundance that can be attributed to sputtering under constant southward interplanetary magnetic field conditions is at least a factor of five less than the rate dictated by the measurements. Although highly uncertain, this result suggests that another energetic process, such as the rapid dissociation of exospheric MgO, may be the main source of the distant neutral component. If meteoroid and micrometeoroid impacts eject mainly molecules, the total amount of magnesium at altitudes exceeding ∼100 km is found to be consistent with predictions by impact vaporization models for molecule lifetimes of no more than two minutes. Though a sharp increase in emission observed near the dawn terminator region can be reproduced if a single meteoroid enhanced the impact vapor at equatorial dawn, it is much more likely that observations in this region, which probe heights increasingly near the surface, indicate a reservoir of volatile Mg being acted upon by lower-energy source processes.  相似文献   

12.
In an attempt to overcome some of the deficiencies of existing meteoroid models, NASA’s Space Environments and Effects (SEE) Program sponsored a 3 year research effort at the University of Western Ontario. The resulting understanding of the sporadic meteoroid environment – particularly the nature and distribution of the sporadic sources – were then incorporated into a new Meteoroid Engineering Model (MEM) by members of the Space Environments Team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. This paper discusses some of the revolutionary aspects of MEM which include (a) identification of the sporadic radiants with real sources of meteoroids, such as comets, (b) a physics-based approach which yields accurate fluxes and directionality for interplanetary spacecraft anywhere from 0.2 to 2.0 astronomical units (AU), and (c) velocity distributions obtained from theory and validated against observation. Use of the model, which gives penetrating fluxes and average impact speeds on the surfaces of a cube-like structure, is also described along with its current limitations and plans for future improvements.  相似文献   

13.
Because of its proximity to the Sun and its small size, Mercury has not been able to retain its atmosphere and only a thin exosphere surrounds the planet. The exospheric pressure at the planetary surface is approximately 10−10 mbar, set by the Mariner 10 occultation experiment. The existence of gaseous species H, He, and O has been established by Mariner 10. In addition Na, K, and Ca have been observed by ground based instrumentation. Other elements are expected to be found in Mercury's exosphere since the total pressure of the known species is almost two orders of magnitude less than the exospheric pressure.It is intended to measure these exospheric particle densities in situ with an instrument on board of ESA's BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) spacecraft. Since the expected exospheric densities are very small we developed a Monte-Carlo computer model to investigate if such a measurement is feasible along the MPO spacecraft orbit. We model energy and ejection angle distributions of the particles at the surface, with the emission process determining the actual distribution functions. Our model follows the trajectory of each particle by numerical integration until the particle hits Mercury's surface again or escapes from the calculation domain. Using a large set of these trajectories bulk parameters of the exospheric gas are derived, e.g., particle densities for various atomic and molecular species. Our study suggests that a mass spectrometric measurement is feasible and, at least at MPO's periherm, all species that are released from the surface will be observed.  相似文献   

14.
The processes of the kinetics and transport of hot oxygen atoms in the transition (between thermosphere and exosphere) region of the upper atmosphere of Mars are studied. The reaction of dissociative recombination of the main ionospheric ion O 2 + with thermal electrons in the ionosphere of Mars is considered as a source of hot oxygen atoms. The distribution of suprathermal oxygen atoms by kinetic energy is calculated. It is shown that the exosphere is populated by a considerable number of suprathermal oxygen atoms with kinetic energies just below the escape energy of 2 eV; that is, a hot oxygen corona of Mars is formed.  相似文献   

15.
《Planetary and Space Science》2007,55(9):1069-1092
Mariner 10, the only spacecraft that ever passed close to Mercury, revealed several unexpected characteristics: an intrinsic magnetosphere, the highest mean density of any Solar System terrestrial planet and a very thin non-collisional atmosphere. Mercury's atmosphere is very poorly explored since only three atomic elements, H, He and O, were observed during the three flybys of Mariner 10. The measurements done by radio and solar occultations provided upper limits on the neutral and ion densities. These measurements pointed out the close connection between species in Mercury's exosphere and its surface, which is also the case for the Moon. Mariner 10 observations also characterized the vertical distributions and the day to night contrasts of Mercury's exosphere for its lightest components H and He (Broadfoot, A.L., et al., 1976. Mariner 10: Mercury atmosphere. Geophys. Res. Lett. 3, 577–580).More than a decade later, the first observation from a ground-based observatory of Mercury's sodium (Na) exospheric component was reported (Potter, A.E., Morgan, T.H., 1985. Discovery of sodium in the atmosphere of Mercury. Science 229, 651–653). Since then, potassium and more recently calcium have been identified in Mercury's exosphere. The bright Na resonant scattering emission has been often observed since 1985. This large set of observations is now the best source of information on Mercury's exospheric mechanisms of ejection, dynamics, sources and sinks. In particular, several of these observations provided evidence of prompt and delayed effects, both localized and global, for the very inhomogeneous Mercury's Na exosphere. These inhomogenities have been interpreted as the trace of Mercury's magnetosphere–solar wind interaction and have highlighted some of the main sources of exospheric material. Some of these features have been also interpreted as the trace of a global dayside to night side circulation of Mercury's exosphere and therefore have highlighted also the relation between exospheric production and upper surface composition.Hopefully, new sets of in situ measurements will be obtained within the next decade thanks to Messenger and Bepi-Colombo missions. Until then, ground-based observations and modelling will remain the only approaches to resolve questions on Mercury's exosphere. Mercury's exospheric composition and structure as they are presently known are described in this paper. The principal models for the main short and long times terms variations and local and global variations of Mercury's exosphere are described. The mechanisms of production and their characteristics are also given. Mercury's exosphere can also be seen as part of the coupled magnetosphere–upper surface–exosphere system and several of the links between these elements are essential to the interpretation of most of the ground-based observations. The relation between Mercury's planet composition and its exospheric composition is also considered, as is the global recycling, sources and sinks of Mercury's exosphere.  相似文献   

16.
We present measurements with an Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) imager on board Mars Express when the spacecraft moves into Mars eclipse. Solar wind ions charge exchange with the extended Mars exosphere to produce ENAs that can spread into the eclipse of Mars due to the ions' thermal spread. Our measurements show a lingering signal from the Sun direction for several minutes as the spacecraft moves into the eclipse. However, our ENA imager is also sensitive to UV photons and we compare the measurements to ENA simulations and a simplified model of UV scattering in the exosphere. Simulations and further comparisons with an electron spectrometer sensitive to photoelectrons generated when UV photons interact with the spacecraft suggest that what we are seeing in Mars' eclipse are ENAs from upstream of the bow shock produced in charge exchange with solar wind ions with a non-zero temperature. The measurements are a precursor to a new technique called ENA sounding to measure solar wind and planetary exosphere properties in the future.  相似文献   

17.
Mercury holds answers to several critical questions regarding the formation and evolution of the terrestrial planets. These questions include the origin of Mercury's anomalously high ratio of metal to silicate and its implications for planetary accretion processes, the nature of Mercury's geological evolution and interior cooling history, the mechanism of global magnetic field generation, the state of Mercury's core, and the processes controlling volatile species in Mercury's polar deposits, exosphere, and magnetosphere. The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission has been designed to fly by and orbit Mercury to address all of these key questions. After launch by a Delta 2925H-9.5, two flybys of Venus, and two flybys of Mercury, orbit insertion is accomplished at the third Mercury encounter. The instrument payload includes a dual imaging system for wide and narrow fields-of-view, monochrome and color imaging, and stereo; X-ray and combined gamma-ray and neutron spectrometers for surface chemical mapping; a magnetometer; a laser altimeter; a combined ultraviolet–visible and visible-near-infrared spectrometer to survey both exospheric species and surface mineralogy; and an energetic particle and plasma spectrometer to sample charged species in the magnetosphere. During the flybys of Mercury, regions unexplored by Mariner 10 will be seen for the first time, and new data will be gathered on Mercury's exosphere, magnetosphere, and surface composition. During the orbital phase of the mission, one Earth year in duration, MESSENGER will complete global mapping and the detailed characterization of the exosphere, magnetosphere, surface, and interior.  相似文献   

18.
Despite recent progress in the modeling of alkali atmospheres like those around the Moon and Mercury, many problems still exist. It is proposed that Rydberg Matter (RM) clusters containing Na and K atoms are the main part of the alkali atmospheres of the Moon and Mercury, forming large clouds. RM clusters are studied in the laboratory with laser fragmentation and laser spectroscopy methods. Due to the very large collision cross sections of Rydberg atoms and RM clusters, the atmospheres are not collision free, as normally assumed based on the low densities of free alkali atoms. The non-escaping radial density variation for the Na atoms, observed, e.g., on the Moon, and the Maxwellian velocity distributions observed on Mercury are caused by a true atmosphere with collisional equilibration; this process is not possible in an exosphere. Fast alkali atoms are released from the RM clusters already at large heights by solar photons and charged particle impact. The kinetic temperatures derived for the atmospheres agree with the quantized energy release. The cluster model predicts that the rate of loss from the surface is much smaller than for a purely atomic model, since the transient storage is in the RM cluster form in the atmosphere and not at the surface. The conductance of the atmosphere is of the order of 100 S due to the facile collisional ionization of the RM clusters. The apparent depletion of K in the atmosphere of Mercury is explained.  相似文献   

19.
We present results from coronagraphic imaging of Mercury’s sodium tail over a 7° field of view. Several sets of observations made at the McDonald Observatory since May 2007 show a tail of neutral sodium atoms stretching more than 1000 Mercury radii (Rm) in length, or a full degree of sky. However, no tail was observed extending beyond 120 Rm during the January 2008 MESSENGER fly-by period, or during a similar orbital phase of Mercury in July 2008. Large changes in Mercury’s heliocentric radial velocity cause Doppler shifts about the Fraunhofer absorption features; the resultant change in solar flux and radiation pressure is the primary cause of the observed variation in tail brightness. Smaller fluctuations in brightness may exist due to changing source rates at the surface, but we have no explicit evidence for such changes in this data set. The effects of radiation pressure on Mercury’s escaping atmosphere are investigated using seven observations spanning different orbital phases. Total escape rates of atmospheric sodium are estimated to be between 5 and 13 × 1023 atoms/s and show a correlation to radiation pressure. Candidate sources of Mercury’s sodium exosphere include desorption by UV sunlight, thermal desorption, solar wind channeled along Mercury’s magnetic field lines, and micro-meteor impacts. Wide-angle observations of the full extent of Mercury’s sodium tail offer opportunities to enhance our understanding of the time histories of these source rates.  相似文献   

20.
《Icarus》1987,71(3):430-440
The discovery of an atomic sodium exosphere at Mercury raises the question of whether Mercury, like Io at Jupiter, can maintain a heavy ion magnetosphere. We suggest that it does, and that heavy ions (mainly Na+) from the exosphere are typically accelerated to keV energies and make important or dominant contributions to the mass (∼300 g sec−1) and energy (∼3 × 109W) budgets of the magnetosphere. The sodium supply to the exosphere is largely from within Mercury itself, with external sources like meteroid infall and the solar wind being relatively unimportant. Therefore Mercury is in the process of losing its semivolatiles. Photosputtering dominates charged particle sputtering and can maintain an adequate rate of Na ejection from the surface.  相似文献   

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