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The NASA MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbital phase around Mercury on March 18,2011.A surprising consistent feature in the data returned is the occurrence of large-scale vortices that form exclusively on the dusk side of the magnetosphere.Here, we present global kinetic-hybrid simulations that explain these observations.It is shown that vortices are excited by a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability near the subsolar point, which grows convectively along the dusk-side magnetopause.