Understanding the Dust Environment at Mercury: From Surface to Exosphere

Abstract

We provide an overview of our understanding of the dust environment at Mercury and the role that dust plays in shaping the planet's surface and exosphere. Our understanding of the role that dust impacts play in the generation of Mercury's atmosphere has evolved considerably with continued analysis of results from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission. Recent models have provided evidence for the probable release of refractory species into Mercury's exosphere via impacts. However, there remain significant questions regarding the relative contributions of atoms released via impacts versus other mechanisms (e.g., photon-stimulated desorption) to the overall exospheric budget. We also discuss the state of observational and modeling efforts to constrain the dust environment at Mercury, including sources from the zodiacal cloud, cometary trails, and interstellar dust. We describe the advancements that will be made in our characterization of dust at Mercury with BepiColombo, providing observational constraints on the dust clouds themselves and the role that impacts play in exospheric generation. On Mercury's surface, there remain outstanding questions regarding the role that dust impacts play in the regolith cycling and development. We review how improved modeling efforts to understand grain lifetimes as a function of impactor flux will further our understanding of Mercury's regolith. Finally, there are few constraints on the role of dust impacts on the space weathering of Mercury's surface, particularly the expected chemical, physical, and spectral alterations to the regolith. Here we discuss the importance of laboratory experiments to simulate these processes for the interpretation of data from MESSENGER and BepiColombo.