Mercury: heat transport and thermal radio emission propagation in structurally inhomogeneous regolith Original Research Article

We present the results of the theoretical study of the dependence of thermal radio emission from Mercury regolith on its structure and composition. By employing different models for a regolith structure we have shown that the radiative component of the heat flux influences strongly on the effective temperature and its spectral characteristics. It is shown also that electromagnetic inhomogeneities of the regolith structure play decisive role for the interpretation of a data from the high-surface-resolution measurements. Results may be useful for comparison of the experimental data with a theory to determine physical characteristics of the upper layer of Mercury.