International Campaign of Mercury’s exosphere observation 2

In the frame of the European and Japanese Bepi-Colombo space mission of Mercury’s exploration (launch in 2013), an international campaign of observation of Mercury’s atmosphere has been started since 2006 and should last until the end of Bepi-Colombo’s life, about 2020. The LATMOS/IPSL participates to this campaign by doing several observations using the THEMIS Solar télescope (Canary Islands), the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (Canary Islands), the New Technology Telescope (Chili) et the Canada France Hawaii Télescope (USA). This campaign aims at preparing the observing strategy and the interpretation of the the forthcoming measurements of two of the selected Bepi-Colombo instruments that are partly built by LATMOS: the UV spectrometer PHEBUS and the mass spectrometer PICAM which main objectives are to understand the origin and evolution of Mercury’s atmosphere.