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 University's MIXS (BepiColombo) team, preparing for the first receipt of science data from Mercury orbit in December 2025 - early 2026.

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 2026, 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 allow us to recover as much scientific insight as possible from the data telemetered 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.

• First-year undergraduate laboratory demonstrating.
• Assisting with a third-year undergraduate research project.

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