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Mercury's Atmosphere and Magnetosphere: MESSENGER Third Flyby ObservationsMESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury en route to orbit insertion about the innermost planet took place on 29 September 2009. The earlier 14 January and 6 October 2008 encounters revealed that Mercury's magnetic field is highly dipolar and stable over the 35 years since its discovery by Mariner 10; that a structured, temporally variable exosphere extends to great altitudes on the dayside and forms a long tail in the anti-sunward direction; a cloud of planetary ions encompasses the magnetosphere from the dayside bow shock to the downstream magnetosheath and magnetotail; and that the magnetosphere undergoes extremely intense magnetic reconnect ion in response to variations in the interplanetary magnetic field. Here we report on new results derived from observations from MESSENGER's Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS), Magnetometer (MAG), and Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS) taken during the third flyby.
Document ID
20100002939
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Slavin, James A.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Anderson, Brian J.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Baker, Daniel N.
(Colorado Univ. Boulder, CO, United States)
Benna, Mehdi
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Johnson, Catherine L.
(British Columbia Univ. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada)
Gloeckler, George
(Michigan Univ. Ann Arbor, MI, United States)
Killen, Rosemary M.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Krimigis, Stamatios M.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
McClintock, William
(Colorado Univ. Boulder, CO, United States)
McNutt, Ralph L., Jr.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Schriver, David
(California Univ. Los Angeles, CA, United States)
Solomon, Sean C.
(Carnegie Institution of Washington United States)
Sprague, Ann L.
(Arizona Univ. Tucson, AZ, United States)
Vevack, Ronald J., Jr.
(Johns Hopkins Univ. Laurel, MD, United States)
Zurbuchen, Thomas H.
(Michigan Univ. Ann Arbor, MI, United States)
Date Acquired
August 25, 2013
Publication Date
December 14, 2009
Subject Category
Astronomy
Meeting Information
Meeting: American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2009 Fall Meeting
Location: San Francisco, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: December 14, 2009
End Date: December 18, 2009
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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