The High Resolution Imaging Channel of the SIMBIO-SYS instrument for the BepiColombo mission to Mercury

ESA BepiColombo space mission, to be launched in 2013, shall visit Mercury planet, carrying a complex of instruments with very high performances. The results of the mission shall certainly provide a fundamental jump in our knowledge about the planet closest to the Sun. The SIMBIO–SYS instrument is a system integrating a stereoscopic imaging channel, a high spatial resolution imaging channel and a visual and infrared hyper–spectral imager channel. SIMBIO–SYS has been selected by ESA in the payload of the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) of the BepiColombo mission. The high spatial resolution imaging channel will have the primary task to provide images with 5 m pixel scale from periherm (400 km from planet surface). This approach will allow us to identify key surface features (craters, scarps, lava flows and plains) and to study their relation with internal processes, as well as the effect of external processes, such as meteor bombardment.