Space Weather in the inner heliosphere during the BepiColombo cruise (2023-2026)

I have been extended as "Guest Investigator" of the BepiColombo mission for three years by the European and Japanese Space Agencies (ESA and JAXA).

My main role is to continue assessing the Space Weather encountered by BepiColombo during the cruise-phase to Mercury taking advantage of its journey within the inner heliosphere, and the near half solar activity cycle of observations that is covering (including both minimum and maximum of solar activity of solar cycle 25). The project focuses on the solar wind variability observed by the near-continuous operations of BepiColombo during its cruise, and on the properties of different solar transient events that will hit the spacecraft, such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), solar wind stream interaction regions (SIR), solar energetic particles (SEPs) and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR). Moreover, BepiColombo observations are being used as upstream solar wind monitors for Venus, Earth and Mars, when possible. In this role, I typically coordinate observations of BepiColombo with other planetary missions at other heliocentric distances to assess the evolution with distance of the Space Weather events, such as at Earth (e.g. SOHO, PROBA-2, ACE, SDO), at 1AU (STEREO-A), at Mars (Mars Express, MAVEN, MSL, Mars Odyssey), at Jupiter (JUNO), and in the interplanetary medium (Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter).

The main science objectives for the next three years are to focus on the long-term Variability of the solar wind taking advantage of the large cruise phase, BepiColombo will reach the maximum of solar activity of Solar Cycle 25; evolution of short-term transient events, solar wind modelling in support of BepiColombo at Mercury, produce main outputs for the Science Teams and the mission, co-organise the BepiColombo Cruise Science Study Group, as well as other ongoing working groups, instrument cross-calibration and team collaborations, and attend the corresponding Team meetings.