Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) Onboard the Mio Orbiter of the BepiColombo Mission

An in-situ cosmic-dust instrument called the Mercury Dust Monitor (MDM) had been developed as a part of the science payload for the Mio (Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, MMO) stage of the joint European Space Agency (ESA)–JAXA Mercury-exploration mission. The BepiColombo spacecraft was successfully launched by an Ariane 5 rocket on October 20, 2018, and commissioning tests of the science payload were successfully completed in near-earth orbit before injection into a long journey to Mercury. MDM has a sensor consisting of four plates of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT), which converts the mechanical stress (or strain) induced by dust-particle impacts into electrical signals. After the commencement of scientific operations, MDM will measure the impact momentum at which dust particles in orbit around the Sun collide with the sensor and record the arrival direction. This paper provides basic information concerning the MDM instrument and its predicted scientific operation as a future reference for scientific articles concerning the MDM’s observational data.