Search Publications
The science process for selecting the landing site for the 2020 Mars rover
Golombek, Matthew P.; Wilson, Sharon A.; Grant, John A. +3 more
The process of identifying the landing site for NASA's Mars 2020 rover began in 2013 by defining threshold mission science criteria related to seeking signs of ancient habitable conditions, searching for biosignatures of past microbial life, assembling a returnable cache of samples for possible future return to Earth, and collecting data for plann…
MarsSI: Martian surface data processing information system
Poulet, F.; Quantin-Nataf, C.; Leyrat, C. +10 more
MarsSI (Acronym for Mars System of Information, https://emars.univ-lyon1.fr/MarsSI/, is a web Geographic Information System application which helps managing and processing martian orbital data. The MarsSI facility is part of the web portal called PSUP (Planetary SUrface Portal) developed by the Observatories of Paris Sud (OSUPS) and Lyon (OSUL) to…
Regional unit definition for the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on the SHAP7 model
Jorda, L.; Lamy, P. L.; Lara, L. M. +34 more
The previously defined regions on the nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko have been mapped back onto the 3D SHAP7 model of the nucleus (Preusker et al., 2017). The resulting regional definition is therefore self-consistent with boundaries that are well defined in 3 dimensions. The facets belonging to each region are provided as supplementar…
ESA's Planetary Science Archive: Preserve and present reliable scientific data sets
De Marchi, G.; Besse, S.; Vallat, C. +15 more
The European Space Agency (ESA) Planetary Science Archive (PSA) is undergoing a significant refactoring of all its components to improve the services provided to the scientific community and the public. The PSA supports ESA's missions exploring the Solar System by archiving scientific peer-reviewed observations as well as engineering data sets. Th…
On the relationship between surface pressure, terrain elevation, and air temperature. Part I: The large diurnal surface pressure range at Gale Crater, Mars and its origin due to lateral hydrostatic adjustment
Newman, Claire E.; Richardson, Mark I.
The daily variation of surface pressure observed by the Curiosity Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) is both significantly larger than observed at other landing sites on Mars and larger than simulated for the Curiosity site by global circulation models (GCM). Mesoscale numerical models are able to simulate the large REMS daily pressure …
Estimate of the water flow duration in large Martian fluvial systems
Di Achille, Gaetano; Mancarella, Francesca; Orofino, Vincenzo +1 more
The presence of ancient fluvial systems on Mars, known as valley networks, is considered one of the most compelling evidence that liquid water was once stable on the planet's surface.
To understand the formation mechanisms of these valleys and to acquire information on the ancient climatic conditions of the planet, we determined the formation…The LatHyS database for planetary plasma environment investigations: Overview and a case study of data/model comparisons
André, N.; Fedorov, A.; Budnik, E. +19 more
We present the Latmos Hybrid Simulation (LatHyS) database, which is dedicated to the investigations of planetary plasma environment. Simulation results of several planetary objects (Mars, Mercury, Ganymede) are available in an online catalogue. The full description of the simulations and their results is compliant with a data model developped in t…
Massive stereo-based DTM production for Mars on cloud computers
Tao, Y.; Muller, J. -P.; Sidiropoulos, P. +5 more
Digital Terrain Model (DTM) creation is essential to improving our understanding of the formation processes of the Martian surface. Although there have been previous demonstrations of open-source or commercial planetary 3D reconstruction software, planetary scientists are still struggling with creating good quality DTMs that meet their science nee…
The performance of the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) prior launch and prospects for Mercury orbit operations
Oberst, J.; Stark, A.; Steinbrügge, G. +2 more
We explore the perspectives of the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) onboard ESA / JAXA's Mercury mission BepiColombo and present an updated semi-analytical instrument performance model, in which we estimate signal-to-noise ratio, single shot probability of false detection, range errors and the accuracy of pulse width reconstruction. The model is…
Science data visualization in planetary and heliospheric contexts with 3DView
André, N.; Budnik, E.; Pitout, F. +21 more
We present a 3D orbit viewer application capable of displaying science data. 3DView, a web tool designed by the French Plasma Physics Data Center (CDPP) for the planetology and heliophysics community, has extended functionalities to render space physics data (observations and models alike) in their original 3D context. Time series, vectors, dynami…