@article{gledocs_11858_11711, author = {Pump, K. and Heyner, D. and Schmid, D. and Exner, W. and Plaschke, Ferdinand}, title = {Revised Magnetospheric Model Reveals Signatures of Field‐Aligned Current Systems at Mercury}, year = {2024-03-08}, volume = {129}, number = {3}, pages = {-}, publisher = {}, publisher = {}, abstract = {
Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet of our solar system and has a dipole‐dominated internal magnetic field that is relatively weak, very axisymmetric and significantly offset toward north. Through the interaction with the solar wind, a magnetosphere is created. Compared to the magnetosphere of Earth, Mercury's magnetosphere is smaller and more dynamic. To understand the magnetospheric structures and processes we use in situ MESSENGER data to develop further a semi‐empiric model of the magnetospheric magnetic field, which can explain the observations and help to improve the mission planning for the BepiColombo mission en‐route to Mercury. We present this semi‐empiric KTH22‐model, a modular model to calculate the magnetic field inside the Hermean magnetosphere. Korth et al. (2015,