Schematic of the rapidly evolving reconnection process in Mercury’s magnetotail. The evolution of magnetic structures in the ion diffusion region corresponds to the subintervals T1–T5 in Figure 2: a reconnection front (T1), the formation of a magnetic flux rope (T2), the formation of two sequential reconnection fronts (T3), the formation of two sequential flux ropes generated by secondary X-lines (T4), and highly time-varying reconnection (T5). The gray inflow arrows denote the period of enhanced external driving. The star in each panel shows the approximate location of the spacecraft relative to the current sheet. The blue dashed arrow shows the trajectory of the tailward-moving magnetic structure relative to the spacecraft consistent with the observations.