About SERENA

Search for Exospheric Refilling and Emitted Natural Abundances (SERENA) (led by the Principal Investigator Stefano Orsini from IAPS-INAF, Rome, Italy) is an instrument package onboard Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) and it is composed of four units of complementary neutral and ionised particle detectors:

ELENA (Emitted Low Energy Neutral Atoms) carried out by INAF/IAPS, Rome, Italy
MIPA (Miniature Ion Precipitation Analyzer) carried out by IRF, Kiruna, Sweden (Co-Pi Stas Barabash)
PICAM (Planetary Ion CAMera) carried out by IWF, Graz, Austria (Co-Pi Herbert Lichtenegger)
STROFIO (STart from a ROtating FIeld mass spectrOmeter) carried out by SwRI, San Antonio TX, USA (Co-Pi Stefano Livi).

The suite integration and testing as well as the SERENA SCU (Sensor Control Unit) and OBSW and ELENA manufacturing have been realised by an industrial consortium constituted by OHB Italia and AMDL.

These four instruments in flight configuration are connected to SERENA SCU inside Elena box, which is in direct interface with Spacecraft for power and data distribution and commanding (TM/TC). The units are nominally linked by the flight harness as depicted in the following block diagram.



STROFIO measures in-situ the lower-energies neutral particle composition and density in the exosphere; ELENA covers the higher energy spectrum of neutral particles released from the surface; MIPA will monitor the solar wind, whereas PICAM is optimized to measure low-energies planetary ions. Each unit is able to operate individually to achieve specific scientific objectives of its own, however, operating simultaneously greatly improves the chances of success of scientific objectives and allows for additional objectives.