Introducing Leicester’s BepiColombo MIXS Instrument

This week (October 15th 2020) the BepiColombo spacecraft made its close approach to Venus, using the flybys (and electric propulsion) to brake against the Sun’s enormous gravity to reach Mercury in 2025. Although MIXS was sleeping through the event, we celebrated Leicester’s contribution to the mission.

BepiColombo is carrying a piece of cutting-edge technology developed and built by University of Leicester scientists – and will represent a first for planetary science. @BepiColombo is an international mission to the planet Mercury.

The Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer (MIXS) instrument is due to arrive at Mercury in 2025 aboard the European Space Agency’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO). The MPO spacecraft, together with the Japanese Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (MMO), constitute the BepiColombo mission. This collaboration will be ESA’s first mission to Mercury, the least explored and most extreme of the terrestrial planets. The mission aims to improve our understanding of the planet’s composition, geophysics, atmosphere, magnetosphere and history.

The MIXS instrument is designed to determine the surface composition of the planet by means of fluorescent X-ray spectroscopy. It is a two component instrument. MIXS-T (the larger component) is an X-ray imaging telescope with a narrow field for detailed images of the surface. MIXS-C collects X-rays from a wider field of view, to get an overview of the planet.

Flight-spare MIXS instrument is currently on loan to the National Space Centre courtesy of the University of Leicester, Space Research Centre, Scjool of Physics and Astronomy.

Meet Professor Emma Bunce, Principal Investigator for the MIXS instrument.

Meet Dr Simon Lindsay from @uniofleicester, one of the Instrument Scientists for the MIXS instrument:

Meet Dr Adrian Martindale from @uniofleicester, one of the Instrument Scientists for the MIXS instrument:

Meet Dr Charly Feldman from @uniofleicester, Postdoctorate Research Associate in X-ray Optics for the MIXS instrument:

Meet Dr Suzie Imber from @uniofleicester, Co-Investigator for the MIXS instrument:

Tonight I am really struggling to believe that two years have passed since we witnessed the launch of @ESA_Bepi from Kourou in French Guiana. I will never forget the range of emotions experienced as we watched the launch, and celebrated afterwards! Incredible… pic.twitter.com/PVkYKUi85O

— Prof Emma Bunce (@drbuncen) October 19, 2020