Adam Fox

After joining the University of Leicester in 2018 as an undergraduate, I graduated with an MPhys in Physics with Space Science in 2022 and began my PhD project, later that year. Through this project, I am working as part of the team preparing for the first receipt of science data from the Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer onboard ESA/JAXA's BepiColombo mission, scheduled to be returned in early 2027.

My research concerns the Mercury Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer (MIXS) onboard ESA/JAXA's BepiColombo mission to Mercury. MIXS will use solar coronal X-rays as an excitation source to carry out X-ray fluorescence analysis of Mercury's surface, ultimately producing a map of elemental abundances across the planet's surface. MIXS also has the capability to image small scale targets in X-rays for compositional analysis. MIXS will be actively telemetering data during the science phase of the mission, scheduled to begin in early 2027, before which, preparations are being made for the data analysis techniques that will be used. 

Making use of the MIXS Ground Reference Facility at Space Park Leicester, my research involves the observation of laboratory samples to develop analyses which enable the recovery of as much scientific insight as possible from the data received from Mercury orbit. Understanding how the MIXS instrument can fit into the wider mission and provide evidence to answer the key mysteries surrounding ancient and in some cases potentially ongoing surface processes. A particular focus of my research is on understanding how MIXS can help resolve questions about the composition of Mercury's Low Reflectance Material through techniques that can identify the effects of enrichment with low-Z elements.

Furthermore, my research aims to further understand the instrument response and how to deconvolve this signal in our data processing. This requires samples of well characterised reference materials, synthetic pure mixtures and synthetic Mercury-like compositions.

Additionally, I am developing fitting routines to solar X-ray flux data. This routine will be applied to calibrated data products from the Solar Intensity X-ray and particle Spectrometer (SIXS) to provide high resolution input spectra to the MIXS data analysis chain.

Currently, I assist with third and fourth-year undergraduate research projects, in the past I have also acted as a facilitator in undergraduate laboratory physics.

• Raymond Hide Prize (2020)
• Stewardson Prize (2022)

• Mercury 2024 (Kyoto, June 2024)
• Mercury Laboratory Workshop (Berlin, September 2024)
• British Planetary Science Conference (Leicester, June 2024) (Presenter and Co-Organiser)
• UK Planetary Forum Early Careers Meeting (Imperial College, January 2024 and Oxford University, January 2025)