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Context.  The Love number  h  2  describes the radial tidal displacements of Mercury’s surface and allows constraints to be set on the inner core size when combined with the potential Love number  k  2 . Knowledge of Mercury’s inner core size is fundamental to gaining insights into the planet’s thermal evolution and dynamo working principle. The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) is currently cruising to Mercury as part of the BepiColombo mission and once it is in orbit around Mercury, it will acquire precise measurements of the planet’s surface topography, potentially including variability that is due to tidal deformation.   Aims.  We use synthetic measurements acquired using BELA to assess how accurately Mercury’s tidal Love number  h  2  can be determined by laser altimetry.   Methods.  We generated realistic, synthetic BELA measurements, including instrument performance, orbit determination, as well as uncertainties in spacecraft attitude and Mercury’s libration. We then retrieved Mercury’s  h  2  and global topography from the synthetic data through a joint inversion.   Results.  Our results suggest that  h  2  can be determined with an absolute accuracy of ± 0.012, enabling a determination of Mercury’s inner core size to ± 150 km given the inner core is sufficiently large (&gt;800 km). We also show that the uncertainty of  h  2  depends strongly on the assumed scaling behavior of the topography at small scales and on the periodic misalignment of the instrument.

Prospects for measuring Mercury’s tidal Love numberh2with the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter

Prospects for measuring Mercury’s tidal Love numberh₂with the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter