A laser altimeter for BepiColombo mission: Instrument design and performance model

This paper presents a definition study of a laser altimeter for the topographic exploration of Mercury. The reference scenario is the BepiColombo mission, a cornerstone mission of European Space Agency (ESA) planned for 2012. BepiColombo will offer the chance to make a remarkable new contribution to our knowledge of the Solar System, by venturing into the hot region near the Sun and exploring Mercury, the most enigmatic of the earth's sisters among the terrestrial planets. First images of Mercury surface were acquired by Mariner 10 in 1974 and 1975 offering a coverage and resolution comparable to Earth-based telescopic coverage of the Moon before spaceflight. BepiColombo mission can be very beneficial by using an optical rangefinder for Mercury exploration. In fact starting from the first missions in 1970s until today, laser altimeters have been demonstrating to be particularly appropriate as part of the scientific payload whenever the topography of earth, lunar and planetary surface is the scientific objective of a space mission.Our system design is compliant to Mercury Polar Orbiter (MPO) of the mission. System performance analysis is carried out simulating main hermean topographic features and the potential targets on the planet by means of analytical models and computer codes and several plot are presented to analyse the performance of the instrument.