Search Publications
Cloud formation along mountain ridges on Titan
Barth, Erika L.
Cassini radar passes have shown a number of mountain ranges on Titan. Radar data covering approximately one quarter of Titan's surface places mountains in primarily equatorial regions with the mean height of about 900 m. The flow of air over topographic features can both trigger and enhance cloud formation. Orographically induced clouds near terre…
Sounding of Titan’s atmosphere at submillimeter wavelengths from an orbiting spacecraft
Hartogh, P.; Lellouch, E.; Coustenis, A. +7 more
An investigation of the capabilities and science goals of a submillimeter-wave heterodyne sounder onboard a Titan orbiter is presented. Based on a model of Titan's submillimeter spectrum, and including realistic instrumental performances, we show that passive limb observations of Titan's submillimeter radiation would bring novel and unique informa…
Sublimation of the Martian CO 2 Seasonal South Polar Cap
Bibring, Jean-Pierre; Langevin, Yves; Martin, Patrick +6 more
The polar condensation/sublimation of CO 2, that involve about one fourth of the atmosphere mass, is the major Martian climatic cycle. Early observations in visible and thermal infrared have shown that the sublimation of the Seasonal South Polar Cap (SSPC) is not symmetric around the geographic South Pole. Here we use observations by OM…
Search for Steins’ surface inhomogeneities from OSIRIS Rosetta images
Jorda, L.; Sierks, H.; Barbieri, C. +10 more
We investigate the possible presence of heterogeneous surface features on asteroid (2867) Steins, using the G-mode multivariate statistical method ( Coradini et al., 1977) applied to Rosetta/OSIRIS images. We analyze both NAC and WAC images obtained near around the closest approach that occurred on September 5th, 2008, through different filters ce…
The flyby of Rosetta at asteroid Šteins - mission and science operations
Accomazzo, Andrea; Lodiot, Sylvain; Küppers, Michael +2 more
The international Rosetta mission, a cornerstone mission of the european space agency scientific Programme, was launched on 2nd March 2004 on its 10 years journey towards a rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko ( Gardini et al., 1999). During its interplanetary flight towards its target Rosetta crosses the asteroid belt twice with the opport…
The far-ultraviolet albedo of Šteins measured with Rosetta-ALICE
Parker, Joel Wm.; Bertaux, Jean-Loup; Weaver, Harold A. +9 more
During Rosetta's flyby of the asteroid (2867) Šteins in 2008, we used the ALICE instrument to measure the first far-ultraviolet (FUV) reflectivity spectrum of an asteroid (850-2000 Å). It is very dark in the FUV, ∼4%, compared to its very high reflectivity (40%) at optical wavelengths. The FUV albedo does not exhibit a systematic color trend acros…
Compositional evidence for Titan's stratospheric tilt
Irwin, P. G. J.; Teanby, N. A.; de Kok, R.
Five years of Cassini CIRS infrared spectra have been used to determine the tilt of Titan's stratospheric symmetry axis with respect to the solid body rotation axis. Measurements of HCN abundance centred around 5 mbar (125 km altitude) at equatorial latitudes show the symmetry axis is tilted by 4.0±1.5∘ in a direction 70±40∘W…
Two-dimensional time-dependent model of the transport of minor species in the Venus night side upper atmosphere
Gérard, Jean-Claude; Collet, Arnaud; Cox, Cédric
We present a numerical tool developed to quantify the role of processes controlling the spatio-temporal distribution of the NO ultraviolet and O2(Δg1) infrared nightglows in the Venus night side upper atmosphere, observed with the VIRTIS and SPICAV instruments on board Venus Express. This numerical tool consists in a two-dimensional che…
Identification of cryovolcanism on Titan using fuzzy cognitive maps
Lunine, Jonathan I.; Kargel, Jeffrey S.; Furfaro, Roberto +2 more
Future planetary exploration of Titan will require higher degrees of on-board automation, including autonomous determination of sites where the probability of significant scientific findings is the highest. In this paper, a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) method for the identification and interpretation of sites that yield the highest potential…
Evidence for subaqueously resedimented sulphate evaporites on Mars
Baioni, Davide; Wezel, Forese Carlo
This article documents the clastic nature of sulphate evaporite beds in the Tithonium Chasma located in the Valles Marineris region of Mars. These beds form a stratified succession characterised by very thick interbedded channel-fill breccia bodies. We infer that the bouldery channel-fills were deposited by voluminous mass-flow processes occurring…