Search Publications
Description, accessibility and usage of SOIR/Venus Express atmospheric profiles of Venus distributed in VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access)
Vandaele, A. C.; Thomas, I. R.; Trompet, L. +9 more
Venus Express SOIR profiles of pressure, temperature and number densities of different constituents of the mesosphere and lower thermosphere of Venus are the only experimental data covering the 60 km to 220 km range of altitudes at the terminator of Venus. This unique dataset is now available in the open access VESPA infrastructure. This paper des…
Compositional and chronological characterization of mare crisium using Chandrayaan-1 and LROC-WAC data
Karthi, A.; Arivazhagan, S.
The surface of the Moon has been observed by human being since time immemorial and it appears distinctly different from that of the earth. Moon is geologically inactive for quite long time and therefore it's an ideal place to study the early solar system history. The lunar surface is dominated by various morphological features such as craters, ril…
Understanding the origin of methane on Mars through isotopic and molecular data from the ExoMars orbiter
Etiope, Giuseppe
The identification of methane (CH4) and its origin on Mars is a major mandate of the ExoMars mission, because this gas has potential links with biological activity. Starting in 2018, the NOMAD spectrometer suite of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter can measure, in the martian atmosphere, important parameters that can contribute to identific…
Adsorption of methane and CO2 onto olivine surfaces in Martian dust conditions
Martin-Torres, Javier; Escamilla-Roa, Elizabeth; Sainz-Díaz, C. Ignacio
Methane has been detected on all planets of our Solar System, and most of the larger moons, as well as in dwarf-planets like Pluto and Eric. The presence of this molecule in rocky planets is very interesting because its presence in the Earth's atmosphere is mainly related to biotic processes. Space instrumentation in orbiters around Mars has detec…
Aerosols: The key to understanding Titan's lower ionosphere
López-Moreno, J. J.; Molina-Cuberos, G. J.; Witasse, O. +2 more
The Permittivity Wave and Altimetry system on board the Huygens probe observed an ionospheric hidden layer at a much lower altitude than the main ionosphere during its descent through the atmosphere of Titan, the largest satellite of Saturn. Previous studies predicted a similar ionospheric layer. However, neither previous nor post-Huygens theoreti…
A statistical approach to decipher the tectonic control on the geometry of Martian channels: Case study from Pyrrhae Fossae, Noachis Terra, Mars
Kundu, Abhik; Dasgupta, Nilanjan; De, Keyur
Channel networks in the mid-latitude during the late Noachian to early Hesperian Period have invoked opinions in favor of presence of water on Martian surface. Disregarding the controversy of the presence of water, this study aims to probe into the controlling factors involved in the development of the channel pathways. These apparently curvilinea…
Final Mimas and Enceladus atlases derived from Cassini-ISS images
Matz, K. -D.; Kersten, E.; Porco, C. C. +4 more
The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) on-board Cassini took a few high-resolution images of the icy Saturnian satellites Mimas and Enceladus over the last seven years of the Cassini mission during non-targeted flybys. We used the new Mimas images to improve the existing semi-controlled mosaic of Mimas. A new controlled Enceladus mosaic was published…
ROSETTA: How to archive more than 10 years of mission
A'Hearn, M. F.; Besse, S.; Taylor, M. G. G. T. +10 more
The Rosetta spacecraft was launched in 2004 and, after several planetary and two asteroid fly-bys, arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August 2014. After escorting the comet for two years and executing its scientific observations, the mission ended on 30 September 2016 through a touch down on the comet surface. This paper describes how t…
Space weather at planet Venus during the forthcoming BepiColombo flybys
Odstrcil, D.; McKenna-Lawlor, S.; Jackson, B.
The BepiColombo (BC) Mission which will be launched in 2018, will include during its Cruise Phase two flybys of Venus and five Mercury flybys. It will then enter a one Earth year orbit about Mercury (with a possible one-year extension) during which two spacecraft, one provided by ESA (MPO) and one provided by JAXA (MMO), will perform both autonomo…
Characterizing dark mantle deposits in the lunar crater Alphonsus
Videen, G.; Ivanov, M. A.; Shkuratov, Y. G. +6 more
We analyze available remote-sensing data of the crater Alphonsus, focusing on the analysis of the crater's dark mantle deposits (DMDs), which includes images from NASA Clementine and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Japanese Selene (Kaguya), and Indian Chandrayaan-1 missions. The Alphonsus DMDs are gentle-sloped flat hills with typical heights …