Mercury is the closest orbiting planet around the sun and is therefore embedded in an
intensive and highly varying solar wind. In-situ data from the MESSENGER spacecraft of the
plasma environment near Mercury indicates that a coronal mass ejection (CME) passed the
planet on 23 November 2011 over the span of the 12 h MESSENGER orbit. Slavin et
al.(2014) derived the upstream parameters of the solar wind at the time of that orbit, and
were able to explain the observed MESSENGER data in the cusp and magnetopause …