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

2011年信使号航天器进入水星轨道，以及定于2014年进行的比佩科伦坡飞行任务是一个前所未有的机会，可以促进我们目前对陆地行星中最不为人所知的行星的结构和演化的了解。第一次，这颗行星的地形和重力场将以足够的精度和分辨率被绘制出来，以便使用它们来推断水星内部的基本性质。对宇宙飞船将提供的数据进行合理的解释需要建立一个适当的计算框架，将重力和地形与行星的内部结构和动力学联系起来。弄清重力场是否主要来自均衡补偿的地形、地幔动力学或这两种成分的组合，将有助于我们限制壳幔界面的深度和拓扑，并确定地幔对流目前正在进行还是过去已经停止，这对水星的磁场产生和热史具有重要意义。

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.