Structure and dynamics of Mercury's interior from a new generation of space-geodetic observations

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The entrance into Mercury’s orbit of the MESSENGER spacecraft in 2011 and the BepiColombo mission scheduled for 2014 represent an unprecedented opportunity to advance our current knowledge of the structure and evolution of the least known among terrestial planets. For the first time, the topography and gravity field of the planet will be mapped with sufficient accuracy and resolution to permit their use to infer fundamental properties of Mercury’s interior. A sound interpretation of the data that will be delivered by the spacecrafts requires the setup of an appropriate computational framework relating gravity and topography to the internal structure and dynamics of the planet. Understanding whether the gravity field originates mainly from an isostatically compensated topography, from mantle dynamics or from a combination of these two components will help us to constrain the depth and topology of the crust-mantle interface and to establish if mantle convection is currently ongoing or has ceased in the past, with important implications for the magnetic field generation and thermal history of Mercury.