Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PLANMAP (Planetary Mapping)

Teaser

In the early stages of planetary exploration, few space agencies were involved and space missions had limited capabilities. Nowadays, however, many nations can maintain robust space programs that continuously provide a great amount of highly complex datasets. Geological maps...

Summary

In the early stages of planetary exploration, few space agencies were involved and space missions had limited capabilities. Nowadays, however, many nations can maintain robust space programs that continuously provide a great amount of highly complex datasets. Geological maps provide the context for all observations and interpretations of surface and subsurface processes on any solid planetary body, and their histories. Nonetheless, despite space activities becoming increasingly international, planetary geological maps are still developed almost exclusively by a single research institute in the world (USGS-USA). Thus, it is high time to improve this situation in order to maximize the scientific output of planetary missions and improve the position of Europe in this context.
Within this framework, it is undeniable that Europe has a prominent position in planetary exploration having sent missions to Moon, Mars, Venus, Titan, and even comet 67P, and leading or being involved in exploration of many other planetary bodies in the years to come (Mercury, Mars, Jovian satellites, Moon, asteroids etc.). Furthermore, human exploration of the Moon, Mars, and asteroids is considered one of the long-term ESA objectives. Scheduled and future European space missions to Solar System bodies need adequate geological support to ensure successful observational strategies for orbital probes and effective landing site selection for robotic and human missions. However, despite Europe’s long tradition of geological mapping of Earth and the numerous ESA missions dedicated to the study of planetary surfaces, no European institution has been able to realize an efficient program of planetary geological mapping so far.
Thus, to ensure European excellence in space science it is necessary to develop an efficient European network for geological planetary mapping which, exploiting the available datasets, can provide new products complementary to the existing ones, starting with the three main bodies of interest for Europe in the next decade: Mars, Mercury, and the Moon. At present, the methodological approach for geological mapping of planetary surfaces is mainly based on techniques developed in the 1970s which guarantees valuable products but leaves wide room for improvement considering the diversity, complexity and large amount of data collected by modern instrumentation and new sensors. PLANMAP’s major focus is the integration of different datasets through data-fusion aiming at the production of highly informative geological maps. These maps will include spectral information, elemental composition, absolute ages and ground truth information. They will also provide the basis for subsurface 3D geological modeling, and will be disseminated using dedicated WebGIS software.
In summary, PLANMAP aims to improve the European excellence in planetary science pursuing the following goals:
1. Prepare toolboxes and define pipelines for innovative geological maps supporting the design and operation of remote sensing instrumentation of ESA’s next generation of planetary missions and future robotic and human exploration.
2. Provide geological maps at different scales aiming at supporting observational strategies and target selection for orbital probes (e.g., ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury) and future robotic and human exploration on the Moon and Mars.
3. Prepare virtual planetary reconstructions to be integrated with planetary analogues for future astronaut training on Mars and the Moon.
4. Give free access to toolboxes, geological maps and virtual environments to all planetary scientists by feeding ESA archives.
5. Deliver cutting edge science by a detailed geological analysis of integrated datasets.
6. Use geological maps and derived products and activities to increase the public interest on planetary exploration

Work performed

PLANMAP developed mapping products, released data and initiated their integration. Mapping areas were defined on Mercury, Moon and Mars based on scientific and exploration merit. All produced products were released on the PlanMap data portal together with the first mapping products and related metadata information. A first batch released with the first mapping products were delivered together with spectral indexes and thresholds. All the information about geomorphological units, chronostratigraphic units and their thickness, spectral units and geo-structural maps were used to evaluate the best locations to perform the first 3D geo-models. All the procedures developed internally for data retrieval, processing workflows, codes, useful documentation for mappers were delivered and constantly updated on PLANMAP GitHub organisation.

Planmap logo, artistic products definition and development of the first banners and comics were produced. PLANMAP social media are active (linked from homepage).

Dissemination activity was performed in a variety of venues.

PLANMAP data can be accessed from several points of access:

Data access: https://data.planmap.eu
Map portal: https://maps.planmap.eu

Documentation and code is available from:

GitHub/tools: https://github.com/planmap
Wiki: https://wiki.planmap.eu

Dedicated map-based storytelling maps are available on: https://stories.planmap.eu

Final results

At half stage of our project we already achieved a considerable impact and other can be foreseen based on current state of the art. The Science impact can be directly inferred from the numbers of published works and geological maps produced. The early data release approach (see https://data.PLANMAP.eu/) allowed them to be shared among the science community and the public and we are already planning to make them available on the NASA trek (https://trek.nasa.gov/). We were able to rise the interest of the US mapping community (USGS/NASA) and there is already an agreement on presenting PLANMAP results in upcoming geologic mappers\' workshop to be held in Denver in 2020. A considerable impact in the European planetary mapping community has been established through collaborative mapping and data analysis efforts via PLANMAP workshops and the use of existing e-infrastructures in which can be found mapping tutorials (https://epn-vespa.github.io/mapping2019/). To increase impact in this perspective PLANMAP liase with Openplanetary (https://github.com/openplanetary/op-data-cafe) and EuroPlanet Society (https://www.europlanet-society.org) has been established and organisation of possible joint workshops with the Europlanet RI and Euro-Planet Regional Hubs are already planned in 2020 for augmented dissemination and impact. Methdologies and work-flows being implemented by PLANMAP will be part of the Geological mapping infrastructure of the future EUROPLANET 2024 (H2020 INFRAIA 2019). The relationship with the Italian Space agency has been reinforced using the existing ASI planetary facilities ASI Matisse for delivering to the public PLANMAP geologic models in Virtual Reality.
Impact on the general public has been reached trough an improved activity on social media, story maps (https://stories.PLANMAP.eu/), numerous publich talks, activities in secondary and primary schools, a downladable comics and a video dedicated to mapping activities .
Finally the nowadays growing China planetary mappers community has been reached through PLANMAP geological training and teaching at the China University of Geosciences in Bejiing in 2018 and another similar school has been planned for winter 2019.

Website & more info

More info: https://planmap.eu.