ISA - An Accelerometer to Detect the Disturbing Accelerations Acting on the Mercury Planetary Orbiter of the BepiColombo ESA Cornerstone Mission to Mercury: on Ground Calibration

摘要

o reach the ambitious goals of the Radio Science Experiment of the BepiColombo space mission to Mercury, among which the planet structure and rotation and test Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) to an unprecedented accuracy, an accelerometer has been selected to fly on-board the MPO (Mercury Planetary Orbiter), the main spacecraft of the two to be placed around the innermost planet of our solar system around 2017. The key role of the on-board accelerometer is to remove from the list of unknowns the non-gravitational accelerations that disturbs the pure gravitational orbit of the MPO spacecraft in the strong radiation environment of Mercury.