Category: VA

21 Years of Europlanet

January 1, 2026

21 Years of Europlanet

New Year’s Day 2026 is Europlanet’s 21st birthday. To celebrate, we highlight 21 things that Europlanet has achieved since its foundation on 1 January 2005.

  1. The Europlanet Science Congress
Opening ceremony of EPSC-DPS2025. Credit: Europlanet.

First held in Berlin in 2006, the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) is the largest annual meeting on planetary science in Europe and regularly attracts over 1200 participants. Its interdisciplinary, interactive and adaptive format makes EPSC an ideal place for the global planetary community to share ideas and build new connections. Joint meetings with the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Sciences (DPS) and the European Astrobiology Network Association (EANA) have brought together even bigger international and cross-disciplinary audiences, with the recent EPSC-DPS2025 in Helskinki becoming the largest planetary meeting to date in Europe with 1800 participants.

  1. Research and Technology Infrastructure
The Laboratory of Electron Induced Fluorescence at Comenius University. Credit: Comenius University.

Europlanet provides access to state-of-the-art research and technology infrastructure (RTI) to support planetary science and space exploration. The distributed RTI includes facilities for the simulation of planetary environments, analysis of planetary samples, testing and development of space technologies, and support of interdisciplinary studies. Our Transnational Access (TA) programme is designed to allow researchers from anywhere in the world, and at all career stages, to have access to facilities to support scientific and technological excellence in planetary/space research and to foster international collaborations. To date, Europlanet has funded over 600 research visits, amounting to in excess of 5,500 days of access (15 years), involving over 800 individual researchers accessing 23 laboratories (with over 80 individual facilities), 12 planetary analogue field sites and 17 telescopes.

Applications for a new TA call will open later in January.

  1. Membership Organisation

Europlanet is a grass-roots organisation, supported by individual members since 2018 and organisational members since 2025. Membership benefits include discounted fees for EPSC, access to facilities, expert exchanges, webinars, training, workshops, funding schemes and much more. Join now to help us continue our mission to support the planetary community around the world.

Join Europlanet>>

  1. Europlanet Early Careers (EPEC) Network
Participants at EPEC Annual Week 2025. Credit: EPEC.

The Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) network is organised by early-career researchers for early-career researchers, and includes volunteers from across the Europlanet international community. The EPEC network is open to all students, doctoral candidates and early-career planetary scientists and space professionals whose last degree (e.g. MSc or PhD) was obtained a maximum of 7 years ago (excluding parental leave, serious illness and similar delays).

EPEC’s activities, including Annual Week and EPEC@EPSC, aim to form a strong network between young professionals by organising early-career-relevant events and by engaging in different projects amongst different focus areas (outreach, diversity, early career support). As early careers comprise over half Europlanet’s individual members and attendees at EPSC, EPEC ensures that the (scientifically) young members of our community have a clear voice within Europlanet to shape the future of planetary and space sciences and engineering.

Find out more>>

  1. Regional Hubs
The launch of the Europlanet Colombia Regional Hub in November 2025. Credit: Europlanet Colombia.

Europlanet’s Regional Hubs support the development of planetary science at a national and regional level, particularly in countries and areas that are currently under-represented within the community. Our Hub Committees organise networking events and workshops to support the research community, as well as to build links with amateur astronomers, industrial partners, policymakers, educators, the media and the wider public. In addition to 10 European Regional Hubs, a Colombian Regional Hub was established in 2025 to support the community in Colombia and Latin America.

  1. Projects
The launch of the European Planetology Network (EuroPlaNet) in 2005. Credit: Europlanet.

Europlanet was founded as a Coordination Action funded by the European Commission (EC) in 2005-2008 to promote networking, support the sharing of resources and overcome fragmentation in the European planetary science community. Through a series of further EC grants awarded between 2009 and 2024, Europlanet has subsequently developed into a global distributed research infrastructure that offers coordinated access to services and facilities spread over 5 continents, supporting a community of thousands of users in academia, industry and in the wider community. In total, the EC has invested €28 million in Europlanet to support the planetary community.

Europlanet has received funding from the European Commission under Grant Numbers 871149, 654208, 228319 and RICA-CT-2004-001637.

  1. VESPA
Superimposed olivine map from OMEGA / Mars-Express in N Syrtis Major area (Jezero crater is at the bottom), displayed in the Aladin service and accessed through VESPA.
Superimposed olivine map from OMEGA / Mars-Express in N Syrtis Major area (Jezero crater is at the bottom), displayed in the Aladin service and accessed through VESPA. Credit: Aladin.

VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) is a web-based search interface to identify and access planetary science and heliophysics data provided by the science community. Developed through EC-funded Europlanet projects, and hosted and maintained by the Observatory of Paris, VESPA is freely available to researchers and the general public. The VESPA portal supports user-friendly searching on metadata associated with generic observation conditions (such as target, instrument, time/space/spectral coverages, illumination conditions, etc) and metadata specific to each dataset (such as instrumental parameters) via the EPN-TAP protocol, which is now a standard of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) for Solar system data. Nearly 250 EPN-TAP data services of various size are declared in the IVOA registry, of which 94 are currently validated and accessible via the portal – including ESA’s Planetary Science Archive (PSA). VESPA also offers an easy solution for small teams to share newly-derived data from a publication or a research project.

  1. SPIDER

Europlanet’s SPIDER Planetary Space Weather Services provide contextual information on predictions and alerts for planetary space weather analysis and payload or spacecraft operations. SPIDER enables researchers to take advantage of data from a suite of missions at different points in the Solar System. Applications of SPIDER’s tools have led to several high-impact publications, and have been used to support planning of the BepiColombo and Juice missions. Opportunities identified through SPIDER for synergistic observations by BepiColombo during its cruise phase with the Solar Orbiter and Solar Parker Probe missions have also been implemented by ESA and JAXA. 

  1. GMAP and Winter School
GMAP Winter School Banner 2026.

The Geological Mapping (GMAP) activity provides a complete infrastructure for the geological mapping of planetary bodies. As well as everything needed to create planetary maps, GMAP provides guidelines and insights on how to produce effective mapping products for scientific exploitation, as well as information on how to display and archive results in a structured way. 

GMAP supports researchers who are interested in learning how to build their own mapping products, as well as mappers who want to learn how to incorporate other types of data analysis into their products.

One of GMAP’s major successes has been the establishment of the annual Geology & Planetary Mapping Winter School. Now in its fifth iteration, the Winter School provides training for anyone interested in planetary mapping to build knowledge and skills in planetary mapping. Participants can follow synchronously or asynchronously to accommodate different time zones. The 2026 edition will run from 26-30 January 2026. 

Find out more or register now>>

  1. Europlanet Telescope Network
Amateur astronomer, Florence Libotte (centre) with astronomers Erika Pakštienė (left) and Gražina Tautvaišienė (right) at the Moletai Observatory, Lithuania.

The Europlanet Telescope Network brings together medium and small telescopes to facilitate and coordinate observations related to planetary science. Founded in 2020, the telescope network has awarded 256.5 observing nights and supported 44 projects on planetary topics from near Earth objects to exoplanets, as well as astrophysical subjects including black holes and binary star systems. As well as supporting the professional scientific community, the Europlanet telescope Network has provided access and training for amateur astronomers to enable them to contribute to planetary research. Since the end of the EC-funded project, the Europlanet Telescope Network has maintained a list of telescopes willing to offer observing time to the community. The Europlanet Telescope Network currently unites 21 observatories with 32 telescopes in 16 countries.

Find out more>>

  1. Webinars

Europlanet holds monthly webinars on a range of topics from science to policy, diversity and outreach. Quarterly webinars are also co-organised with the Science Team of the ESA Juice mission. 

The JUICE mission will explore Jupiter and its icy moons.
Europlanet webinars provide quarterly updates on the JUICE mission on its long journey to reach and explore Jupiter and its icy moons. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab/NASA/JPL/J Nichols/U Leicester/U Arizona/DLR.

Find out what’s coming up>>

  1. Meetings and Workshops
Group photo of in-person participants at ERIM 2023 in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Group photo of in-person participants at ERIM 2023 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Credit: Europlanet/J-D Bodénan.

In addition to EPSC and EPEC Annual Week, Europlanet organises a range of meetings, summer schools, workshops and training sessions to support the community. Our interactive online Teams Days, held 2-3 times per year, are an opportunity for the community to provide input and feedback into Europlanet’s strategy and operations. The Europlanet Research Infrastructure Meeting (ERIM) in 2023 comprised a series of interactive workshops with the aim of promoting collaboration across the Europlanet community. More recently, policy workshops organised in partnership with other research infrastructures have helped share information on upcoming opportunities and best practice for distributed RIs.

In total, over the past two decades, Europlanet has provided training for over 7,500 members of the planetary community, with a particular focus on early career researchers.

Find out more>>

  1. Discord

Join hundreds of other Europlanet members on our Discord server to keep up with news, events, job opportunities and to connect with colleagues around the world. The server is designed with a variety of channels to facilitate discussions and interactions, including text channels, discussion forums and voice channels. We also hold regular informal catch ups and science discussion ‘hangouts’.

Join Europlanet on Discord>>

  1. Diversity

Europlanet is committed to building a diverse, inclusive planetary science and ensuring that individuals within that community experience equal opportunity, regardless of gender, disability, ethnic origin, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marital status, age, nationality or socioeconomic background. The Europlanet Diversity Committee acts as a strategic task force to advise, coordinate and champion activities across Europlanet that further the association’s commitment to equality, diversity and inclusivity. As well as activities around EPSC, the Diversity Committee organises events to raise awareness of diversity, inclusivity and accessibility in the planetary community, such as through the Planetary Science Wiki Edit-a-thon.

  1. Outreach

Outreach and education have been a core part of Europlanet initiatives since its foundation the early 2000s. Our objective is to support the planetary science community at a grass roots level to do more public engagement and educational activities, and to share best practice, training and resources to increase the impact of those efforts. Over 20 public engagement and education projects have been supported with more than 135,000€ of seed funding by Europlanet.

The Outreach Working Group coordinates activities, such as EPSC Goes Live for Schools, funding programmes, sharing of best practice and the annual prize for Public Engagement.

  1. Policy and Industry
Europlanet exhibition in the European Parliament. Credit: Europlanet.

Europlanet engagement with policy makers and industry aim to build collaborations and create synergies between cutting-edge science and the technological challenges of planetary science and exploration.

Europlanet has organised and participated in briefings, events, conference sessions (e.g. at EPSC) and other opportunities to engage policy makers in the European Parliament and the European Commission with planetary science, as well as engage with high-level representatives of ESA, NASA and other national and international space agencies. Organising events within the European Parliament has proved an effective platform to develop relationships with MEPs and other stakeholders, enabling the community to feed into discussions on future funding and policies relevant to planetary science.

Industry engagement activities have included organising technology foresight workshops, collaborations with space industry trade associations, developing contacts and networks within industry, participating in industry conferences and events, and convening industry and policy sessions at EPSC.

Europlanet’s distributed infrastructure offers industrial partners access to simulation and testing facilities for a range of environments that planetary and space missions may encounter through launch to their destination in orbit or on a planetary surface. By accessing Europlanet facilities, companies and SMEs can increase the value of their technology by increasing the Technology Readiness Level (TRL), understanding how instrumentation operates under realistic planetary conditions, or by identifying potential issues. Several of our RTI facilities are operated by commercial organisations.

  1. Collaborations

Collaborations stimulated through Europlanet, and involving its beneficiaries, have led to several successful proposals for new projects funded through the European Commission and national agencies. From the development of Machine Learning tools to mobilising researchers in Africa, these external projects act as multipliers for the impact of Europlanet in many different communities. 

  1. Expert Exchanges
Expert exchange to observing the DART impact in Kenya. Credit: The Travelling Telescope.

Europlanet’s Expert Exchange Programme aims to support the mobilisation of the planetary community to share expertise and best practice and to prepare new facilities and services for integration into Europlanet’s research infrastructure. The programme provides funding for short visits (up to one week) and over the last two decades, more than 200 expert exchanges have been supported.

Topics for visits have included training on the use of instrumentation, short scientific projects, improvements to facilities and the development of outreach collaborations. Evaluation of the visits show that bringing individuals together to exchange expertise often leading to synergies that would not happen otherwise, particularly for researchers from under-represented countries. The programme has also supported the professional development of early career scientists, helping them to prepare for careers outside academia. 

Find out more>>

  1. Funding and Awards
Tactile Mars exhibit from the Planets in Your Hand exhibition funded by Europlanet in 2017. Credit: Kosmas Gazeas.

Europlanet offers funding and bursaries to support the community in various ways. Each year, we provide over 100 bursaries for early career and researchers from under-represented countries to attend EPSC. The Committee Funding Scheme offers grants of up to 5000 € to support the scientific, community-building and outreach activities of our members.

Europlanet recognises the contributions of the planetary science community through a range of medals, prizes and other awards. The Europlanet Medals, launched in 2025, honour outstanding contributions from individuals of three different scientific career-stages to the subjects covered by the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC). The Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement with Planetary Science is also awarded to individuals or groups who have developed innovative and socially impactful practices in planetary science communication and education. The EPSC Outstanding Poster Competition recognises the work of early career researchers at EPSC.  

  1. Impact
Fernando Gomez from Argentina participated in a Transnational Access visit to facilities at the Korean Basic Science Institute (KBSI). Credit: F Gomez.

Europlanet activities are evaluated against a framework of core indicators for assessing scientific, technological, education and training, economic, and social and societal impacts. Evaluation shows that the impact of activities to date have been particularly strong in the scientific, technological, education and training areas. 

 The 197 Transnational Access projects supported through the most-recent Europlanet 2024 RI project are expected to lead to over 300 publications and 400 conference presentations. Interviews and follow-up surveys show that over 90% of visitors are planning future collaborations with their host facility. In particular, early career researchers and students report that the TA programme provides them with opportunities – including collaboration and network-building – that would not otherwise have been available to them, thus accelerating their career development. 

Upgrades to facilities have provided increasing support for local infrastructure and associated employment, and there has been at least one SME company that was developed as a result of the TA programme. 

The new Europlanet Evaluation Unit now offers evaluation support and consultancy for external organisations that would like to develop an evaluation framework or implement an impact evaluation of their activities.

  1. Teamwork

Europlanet’s existence and continued activities would not be possible without the support of many individuals and organisations. In particular, we would like to thank our Executive Board, Committees and Working Groups for their huge investment of time and energy in making Europlanet a thriving and vibrant community. We thank our individual and organisational members for supporting us and participating in our activities. We are also indebted to the European Commission for funding over the years, as well as our project officers at the EC for their support, guidance and advice.

Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149. 

Europlanet GMAP Winter School – Apply Now!

December 17, 2025

Europlanet GMAP Winter School – Apply Now!

26-30 January 2026

Apply to join the Europlanet GMAP Winter School, which will take place from 26-30 January 2026. The Winter School, which allows both synchronous and asynchronous participation, is focused on the production of planetary geological maps of a range of Solar System bodies.

Building on past editions, the 2026 edition will cover introductory knowledge about planetary data, coordinate reference systems and software tools, the geology of key features on Mars, Earth and the Moon, and feasibility studies for future exploration.

The GMAP Winter School is organised by Europlanet, a non-profit association for the advancement of planetary science, and is open to Europlanet members (both individual members and staff of organisational members).

Winter School Website
Application Form
Membership of Europlanet

EPSC-DPS2025: Artificial intelligence drives the discovery of new exoplanets

September 9, 2025

EPSC-DPS2025: Artificial intelligence drives the discovery of new exoplanets

Researchers from the University of Bern have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model capable of predicting the architecture of planetary systems and subsequently inferring the presence of yet-to-be-discovered planets. They use the so-called Transformer architecture which is the basis of the Large Language Models powering tools like the recently launched Swiss model Apertus or chatbots such as ChatGPT. The findings have been presented this week at the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS) 2025 in Helsinki.

For more than two decades, researchers at the University of Bern have developed the so-called ‘Bern model’, a suite of computer programs that can numerically simulate the formation of planetary systems, thus shedding light on system architecture. These models are, however, very complex: each simulation from the Bern model can take a few days to a few weeks to be computed using modern super-computers.

Using modern AI techniques trained on the Bern model data, Prof. Yann Alibert and Sara Marques from the NCCR PlanetS and the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern, and Dr. Jeanne Davoult, former PhD student of the University of Bern and now researcher at the DLR in Berlin, have developed an AI model capable of computing the formation of planetary systems in seconds, a million times faster than traditional computations. The study has just been published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and was also presented last week at the ‘Fast Machine Learning for Science’ conference in Zurich.

Knowing where to observe

Present day and near future observational facilities will soon be able to observe and characterize extrasolar planets similar to the Earth, while they so far have been limited to planets closer to their host stars. “Earth-like planet detection requires large amount of observing time. In this context, knowing where to observe is very important to save very costly observation time”, explains Yann Alibert, first author of the study. 

In order to prioritize between different possible targets, one can use the observations of easier-to-observe other planets in the same systems. This, however, requires a profound understanding of the so-called architecture of a system: how the properties (orbital position, mass, etc.) of one planet in a system relate to the properties of other planets in the same system.

Inspired by Large Language Models

The team trained its AI model on tens of thousands of numerical simulations of planetary system formation also developed at the University of Bern. “The new AI model can be used to predict the presence and properties of yet-to-be-discovered additional planets in already known extrasolar planetary systems”, as Sara Marques, PhD student at the University of Bern, points out.

In an experiment presented in the current study, the authors showed that in a real three-planet system, the properties of the second and third planet can be inferred from the properties of the innermost planet of the system. Alibert explains: “This approach can be used to generate new planetary systems: Knowing a single planet in a system, we can predict the rest of the planets for systems of three planets with our model.” Alibert continues: “The key in our study was to realize that planetary systems can be seen as sequences of planets, exactly as sentences are sequences of words. This triggered the idea of using the AI methods from Large Language Models, used for instance by chatbots such as ChatGPT, to build our AI model.”

The authors used the so-called ‘Transformer architecture’ introduced in the field in 2017 to create a generative model that can produce sequences of planets orbiting the same stars. “The Large Language Models predict the rest of a sentence based on the sequence created by the first few words. In our case, we predict the sequence of outer planets in a system, based on the first inner ones,” further explains Marques.

“This new study builds upon a previous AI model encouraging results,” points out Dr. Jeanne Davoult, former student in the NCCR PlanetS, now working at the DLR Berlin. “In the last model, based on the inner planet of a system, we were predicting the probability of an Earth-like planet to be in the system. Keeping the analogy with language models, it was like predicting the presence of a specific word in a sentence, based on its beginning. In this new study, we predict all the rest of the sentence and not only the probability of a single word.”

“The results of the generative AI model were so accurate that we were very skeptical at first,” remembers Marques. A large range of tests were made by the researchers, in which they used machine learning classifiers, and they submitted their results to other scientists. “In the end, they all concluded the same: generated planetary systems are virtually indistinguishable from numerical simulations,” continues Marques.

Preparing for the PLATO mission and others

Scheduled to be launched in 2026, the ESA PLATO mission will discover thousands of planetary systems, with the planet closest to the star being, in general, the first to be observed. Some of these systems could harbor planets like the Earth, yet these will likely be discovered by ground-based telescope using other observations later.

“Our new AI model could be used to prioritize the observations of these systems by telescope, enhancing the probability to find Earth twins”, says Davoult. In the coming years, the models will be extended to predict more properties of planets, such as their composition or habitability. “When I was hired as a postdoc in 2001, I initiated numerical simulations of planetary systems at the University of Bern. This new AI model is the natural continuation of this Bernese expertise”, says Alibert. “AI is now present in everyone’s life, I am convinced it will more and more be key in scientific discoveries, in planetary sciences and elsewhere”, he concludes.

Publication details:Alibert, Y, Davoult, J., Marques, S., 2025, A transformer-based generative model for planetary systems, Astronomy and Astrophysics.
URL: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2025/09/aa52297-24/aa52297-24.html
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/202452297

Contacts

EPSC–DPS 2025 Press Office
press@europlanet.org

Image

The generative AI model of the University of Bern is able to create synthetic planetary systems. Credit: UniBE / NCCR PlanetS, Illustration: Thibaut Roger.

https://www.europlanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/01_20250909_Medienmitteilung_UniBE_KI_Exoplanetenforschung_Illustration©NCCRPlanetS_ThibautRoger_web.jpg

Notes for Editors

About the Joint Meeting of the Europlanet Science Congress and the Division of Planetary Sciences (EPSC-DPS) 

The Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC), established in 2006 as the European Planetary Science Congress, is the largest planetary science meeting in Europe. It covers the entire range of planetary sciences, with an extensive mix of talks, workshops and poster sessions, as well as providing a unique space for networking and exchanges of experiences.

EPSC joined forces for the first time with the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) for a joint meeting in Nantes, France, in 2011. This was followed by DPS-EPSC 2016 in Pasadena, EPSC-DPS 2019 in Geneva, and the return to the United States for the DPS-EPSC 2023 meeting in San Antonio. This year will mark the third iteration of a joint European-based meeting. The intent of the joint meetings is not only to connect the European and North American planetary science communities, but also to consolidate two major meetings and motivate planetary scientists from all over the globe to attend. With around 1800 participants expected to join in person and online, EPSC-DPS2025 will be the largest planetary science meeting held to date in Europe.

Follow on social media (Bluesky, X and LinkedIn) with the hashtag #EPSC-DPS2025 for updates on the meeting.

About Europlanet

Europlanet (europlanet.org) is a non-profit association and membership organisation that provides the planetary science community with access to research infrastructure, services and training. The Europlanet Association Sans But Lucratif (AISBL), established in 2023, builds on the heritage of a series of projects funded by the European Commission between 2005 and 2024 (Grant Numbers 871149, 654208, 228319 and RICA-CT-2004-001637) to support the planetary science community in Europe and around the world. 

About the DPS

The Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS), founded in 1968, is the largest special-interest Division of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Members of the DPS study the bodies of our own solar system, from planets and moons to comets and asteroids, and all other solar-system objects and processes. With the discovery that planets exist around other stars, the DPS has expanded its scope to include the study of extrasolar planetary systems as well. The American Astronomical Society (AAS), established in 1899, is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America. The mission of the AAS is to enhance and share humanity’s scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community, which it achieves through publishing, meeting organization, science advocacy, education and outreach, and training and professional development.

Bern Model of Planet Formation and Evolution

Statements can be made about how a planet was formed and how it has evolved using the “Bern Model of Planet Formation and Evolution”. The Bern model has been continuously developed at the University of Bern since 2001. Insights into the manifold processes involved in the formation and evolution of planets are integrated into the model. These are, for example, sub models of accretion (growth of a planet’s core) or of how planets interact gravitationally and influence each other, and of processes in the protoplanetary disks in which planets are formed. The model is also used to create so-called population syntheses, which show how often planets form in a protoplanetary disk under certain conditions. 

Bernese space exploration

With the world’s elite since the first moon landingWhen the second man, “Buzz” Aldrin, stepped out of the lunar module on July 21, 1969, the first task he did was to set up the Bernese Solar Wind Composition experiment (SWC) also known as the “solar wind sail” by planting it in the ground of the moon, even before the American flag. This experiment, which was planned, built and the results analyzed by Prof. Dr. Johannes Geiss and his team from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, was the first great highlight in the history of Bernese space exploration.Ever since Bernese space exploration has been among the world’s elite, and the University of Bern has been participating in space missions of the major space organizations, such as ESA, NASA, and JAXA. With CHEOPS the University of Bern shares responsibility with ESA for a whole mission. In addition, Bernese researchers are among the world leaders when it comes to models and simulations of the formation and development of planets.The successful work of the Space Research and Planetary Sciences Division (WP) from the Physics Institute of the University of Bern was consolidated by the foundation of a university competence center, the Center for Space and Habitability (CSH). The Swiss National Fund also awarded the University of Bern the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, which it manages together with the University of Geneva.

In Memory of Riccardo Pozzobon

September 8, 2025

In Memory of Riccardo Pozzobon

We are devastated by the news that Riccardo Pozzobon was involved in a tragic accident while on a research trip to the Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, on 2 September 2025.

Riccardo graduated in Geology and Technical Geology in Padua in 2010 and, after obtaining his PhD, specialised in the field of planetary geology.

A talented and inspirational researcher, Riccardo participated in numerous international missions, published significant studies (including discoveries on lunar lava tubes) and was a lecturer in the Digital Geological Mapping at the University of Padova. He was also an instructor in the PANGEA training course for astronauts at the European Space Agency.

For Europlanet, he was a key driver of the Geological Mapping (GMAP) activity and, in particular, the Geological Mapping Winter School. The online Winter School, established during Covid in 2021, has grown to attract over 750 participants in 2025 and is a reflection of Riccardo’s commitment to curiosity, collaboration and community building.

He will be very much missed.

Our thoughts are with Riccardo’s family, particularly his wife and young son. To support them in this unimaginably difficult time, efforts are underway by friends and colleagues at the University of Padova to set up a donation fund. 

There will be book of condolence at the main Europlanet stand at EPSC-DPS2025 from 08-12 September, which we invite Riccardo’s friends and colleagues to sign. Alternatively, please share memories of him or pictures via the form below, which we will collate and send with the book to the family.

We will add here details of pages with further information about Riccardo and ways to support his family as they become available.

Links

University of Padova Department of Geosciences statement on the passing of Riccardo Pozzobon

Gallery of images of Riccardo

Riccardo Pozzobon. Credit: ESA.
Riccardo Pozzobon creating a 3D model of samples collected by Luca Parmitano one hour previously on the ISS. Credit: AP Rossi.
Riccardo Pozzobon (left) during an ESA PANGEA training course. Credit: AP Rossi.
Riccardo Pozzobon during a field trip. Credit: University of Padova.
Riccardo Pozzobon (right) during an ESA PANGEA-X training course in 2017. Credit: AP Rossi.

Issue 8 of the Europlanet Magazine is out now!

September 3, 2025

Issue 8 of the Europlanet Magazine is out now!

In this issue:

In Focus

A round up of news from Europlanet and the planetary community, including:

News from Europlanet

Cover of Issue 8 of the Europlanet Magazine

Community News

Quickfire Questions with Tim Lichtenberg

The Europlanet Future Research Working Group interviews the Europlanet Early Career Medal Winner, Tim Lichtenberg (extended version of the article here).

EPEC: A New Generation

Jessie Hogan (The Open University, UK) and Nimisha Verma (DLR, Germany), Co-Chairs of the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) Network, give a status update and describe future plans to expand EPEC’s community and activities.

MoonIndex: A Tool to Democratise Prospecting for Minerals on the Moon

Javier Eduardo Suárez Valencia of the University of Padova (Italy) reports how Europlanet’s development of an open-source tool to study the mineralogy of the Moon has led to the discovery of new lunar features.

The Insiders’ Guide to Industry Engagement  

Anita Heward, Editor of the Europlanet Magazine, introduces a special focus on industry and the importance of academia-industrial links for the planetary science community.

Planetary Perspectives: Knowledge Transfer

In this edition of Planetary Perspectives, Geraint (Taff) Morgan shares insights on working with industry and knowledge transfer.

Climbing the Mountain of Knowledge Transfer

Elena Benedetto (University of Geneva/NCCR PlanetS, Switzerland) explores how the NCCR PlanetS Technology and Innovation Platform (TIP) has helped shape innovation, industry relations and instrumentation development for the Swiss community of planetary sciences.

Mauve: An Ultraviolet Trailblazer for Commercial Science Satellites Made in Europe  

Yoga Barrathwaj Raman Mohan and the team at Blue Skies Space (UK and Italy) describe how the company is taking a new approach to delivering data from science satellites to the global science community. 

A Laboratory’s Journey into Space

Mihály Veres, former CEO of Isotoptech, describes how the development of a company to provide research and development, manufacturing and laboratory measurement services has supported research activities from nuclear power to the heart of our Solar System.

Tumbleweed Rovers – A New Paradigm of Martian Exploration 

James Kingsnorth, Head of Science at Team Tumbleweed (Netherlands), describes how technological innovation by a startup could drive large-scale, low-cost exploration of the Red Planet.

Spacetek Technology: From Academia to Industrial Innovation

Maximilian Rothenberger, Chief Executive Officer (CEO)/Head of Sales and Jürg Jost, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)/Co-Founder of Spacetek Technology AG (Switzerland), describe how a university spin-out has become a leading innovator in both industrial and space technologies.

Commkit – Challenge: Inspire the Next Generation  

In his column on science communication, Thibaut Roger (University of Bern/NCCR PlanetS, Switzerland) discusses how competitions and challenges can link education, outreach and industry.

The Last Word – Shaping Our Planetary Identity 

Stavro Lambrov Ivanovski, Vice President of Europlanet, reflects on two decades of activities and the road ahead for Europlanet.

Download Issue 8

Europlanet 2024 Highlights

December 31, 2024

Europlanet 2024 Highlights

2024 has been a transformational year for Europlanet, with the completion of the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project and the full transition to become a sustainable non-profit association. Here are some of our highlights from the past 12 months.

December – Europlanet Enters a New Era

Over the past decade, work has been ongoing to create a sustainability plan that will enable Europlanet to continue its activities, independent of EC funding. 

The first step was the launch of the Europlanet Society in 2018 to support the sustainability of networking programmes. Since 2023, the foundation of the Europlanet Association Sans But Lucratif (AISBL) has made Europlanet a sustainable legal entity. In December 2024, a new organisational membership programme was launched that will provide a solid foundation for a Europlanet research infrastructure in decades to come.

This new funding model will enable Europlanet to carry on core activities, including:

  • Mobility programmes, with access to facilities, telescopes and expert exchanges.
  • Training and mentoring of early career planetary scientists and the wider community, including the Planetary Mapping Winter School.
  • Support for the community at a grass-roots level through travel bursaries, prizes and small grants.
  • Sustaining and growing our community through EPSC, strategic partnerships and other activities in all regions of Europe and internationally.
  • Ensuring the voice of the planetary science community is heard in important strategic fora in Europe and internationally.

Find out more

November – Webinars

Europlanet hosts webinars on the last Tuesday of every month on topics ranging from careers to scientific techniques and services. In 2024, we started a collaboration with the European Space Agency’s Juice Mission team to host a new series of webinars (held on Fridays, once a quarter) with a special focus on Juice, its journey to the Jupiter system, and the science it will be doing during flybys and when it starts its main mission to study Jupiter’s icy moons.

Watch recordings of past webinars here.

October – Outreach and Education

Since its foundation almost 20 years ago, outreach and education have been a core part of the Europlanet community and mission. In 2024, outreach activities included attendance at Switzerland’s largest Comic Con, Fantasy Basel, the #InspiredByOtherWorlds arts contest, the Planets in Your Hand exhibition at the Berlin Planetarium (organised by the German Hub and EPSC2024 Local Organising Committee) and the Cosmic Interviews event at EPSC2024, where female students were offered the opportunity to talk to astronomers (organised by MINToring program at the FU Berlin and Lecturers Without Borders).

Find out more about Europlanet Outreach and Education

The Planets In Your Hands Exhibition. Credit: Europlanet/T Roger.

September – Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) Returns to Berlin

Europlanet General Assembly at EPSC2024. Credit: Europlanet/T Roger.

The Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) returned to Berlin for a third time from 8-13 September 2024. Established in 2006, EPSC has grown into the largest annual meeting in Europe for planetary science and has been hosted in nine different countries. The hybrid 2024 edition, hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin and online, was attended 1200 participants from 43 countries.

The meeting received 1221 abstracts, with 1183 presentations scheduled over 98 Scientific Sessions, including 693 orals presentations, 22 dissertation oral talks and 500 posters presentations.

To foster interactions, connections and potential collaborations among diverse Europlanet communities — including academics, industry professionals, policymakers, and communicators at all career levels — E-SPIN was a new thematic event for EPSC2024. The event focused on ‘innovation’ in planetary sciences, serving as a common thread across all these communities.

Outreach programmes included a public event at the Zeiss Planetarium, and EPSC Goes Live for Schools, which supported conference attendants to engage with schools in the Berlin area and online. The conference was sponsored by Freie Universität Berlin, the Natural History Museum of Berlin and the Space: Science & Technology journal. Bursaries for 128 early careers, researchers from under-represented states amateurs and teachers were supported through Europlanet and the International Commission on Planetary Atmospheres and their Evolution (ICPAE). 

August – Europlanet Magazine Special Issue

A special compilation of articles about Europlanet 2024 RI activities from the last seven issues of the Europlanet Magazine was published in the summer of 2024. The first feature is a summary of the main findings by the project’s impact evaluation officer, whose role has been to assess the effectiveness of the RI for its user community. The articles that follow give more in-depth overviews of the project’s main activities, including Transnational Access visits to laboratories and field sites, upgrades to facilities, Virtual Access services and Networking Activities.

The Europlanet Magazine, established in 2021, aims to highlight the range of activities by the Europlanet community academic and industrial partners, and the wider planetary community. The next issue will be published in spring 2025. Read Issue 7 here.

July – A Wrap for Europlanet 2024 RI

Infographic showing main results from the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project.

The 31 July 2024 marked the end of the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project. The €10 million programme was funded by the European Commission (EC) to provide infrastructure to address the major scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science and strengthen Europe’s position at the forefront of space exploration. With over 50 beneficiaries providing access to more than 40 facilities on 5 continents, as well as four virtual access services linking over 100 data services and catalogues, the project was one of the most complex and ambitious ever supported by the EC. 

Professional evaluation of the project reveals that significant impact has emerged from the project in scientific, technological, training and education, economic, social and societal domains. Find out more.

June – A Month of Meetings

Participants in Europlanet's annual training school, EPEC Annual Week, have been exploring Padova. Here they gathered in teh colonade.
The Europlanet Early Careers (EPEC) network’s annual raining school took place in Padova, Italy, from 24-28 June 2024. Credit: EPEC/Europlanet.

June and July were busy months for Europlanet, with participation in multiple conferences and workshops. Europlanet had a stand at the European Astronomical Society (EAS) Annual Meeting in Padova, Italy and the British Planetary Science Congress (BPSC) in Leicester.

The Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) Annual Week was hosted at the Università degli Studi di Padova. Across four days, 23 in-person participants and 20 online attendees networked and took part in workshops, talks and social activities. EPEC Annual Week is a great opportunity for early careers to make new connections, create collaborations and get to know the wider Europlanet community. This year’s highlights included sessions on planetary science in Italy and a group walking tour of Padova’s historic city centre.

The Europlanet Central Europe Hub’s Tatra workshop, held on 19-20 June 2024 at the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Tatranská Lomnica, Slovakia, brought together experts and early careers in planetary and space science from across Europe for two days of presentations and discussions. 

May – Transnational Access Visits Completed

Infographic showing key figures for Europlanet 2024 RI’s Transnational Access Programme

Transnational Access (TA) is a cornerstone of all research infrastructure projects funded by the European Commission. By enabling researchers from one country to visit facilities in another, with all travel and service costs covered, the Commission aims to maximise the efficiency and quality of science produced, bridge the gap between highly developed and lesser-developed regions, support international collaboration and train the next generation of researchers. 

Calls issued through the Europlanet 2024 RI project attracted a total of 323 applications. The Covid-19 pandemic caused serious disruption to the programme, requiring the EC to grant a six-month extension to allow facilities to work through the backlog of TA visits. However, of the 211 TA projects approved for funding, 197 were actually carried out, involving 293 researchers and 2077 days of access. The diverse science supported by the TA programme has led to several high-impact publications and new collaborations.

A new TA call will be issued in early 2025 and you can read all the TA publishable reports since 2020 here.

April – Virtual Access Services Highighted

Schematic view of planetary material escaping through Venus magnetosheath flank. The red line and arrow show the region and direction of observations by BepiColombo when the escaping ions (C+, O+, H+) were observed.
Schematic view of planetary material escaping through Venus magnetosheath flank. TCredit: Thibaut Roger/Europlanet 2024 RI/Hadid et al.

A fleeting visit of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Venus revealed surprising insights into how gases are stripped away from the upper layers of the planet’s atmosphere. Detections in a previously unexplored region of Venus’s magnetic environment showed carbon and oxygen accelerated to speeds where they could escape the planet’s gravitational pull. Europlanet’s SPIDER space weather modelling tools enabled the researchers to track how the particles propagated through the Venusian magnetosheath. The results were published in Nature Astronomy on 12 April.

Meanwhile, the VESPA Virtual Observatory for Solar System data ran an implementation workshop in Warsaw from 22-26 April to make six new services accessible to the community through VESPA. These included:

  • A service to supports calibration, curation, archiving and dissemination of data from ground-based solar telescopes, provided by the Science Data Centre (SDC) of the Institute for Solarphysics in Germany.
  • Ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) fluctuation maps from the Space Radio Diagnostic Research Centre in Poland
  • Measurements of Earth’s magnetic field anomalies caused by meteorite impacts, provided by the University of Warsaw in Poland
  • British Astronomical Association Comet Image Archive
  • A Student Science Club CubeSat Mission by the Rzeszow University of Technology in Poland
  • Lunar Sample Spectroscopy Database (LSSD) from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India.

VESPA currently provides access to over 90 services in the VESPA Portal and over 290 in the IVOA registry.

Europlanet’s other Virtual Access (VA) services are also thriving, with a new Machine Learning Working Group on Discord and the GMAP Community GitHub.

March – Regional Hubs Get Active

Europlanet’s network of Regional Hubs grew in strength in 2024, with new activities and personnel. There was a new chair of the German Hub, Iberian early career prizes for theses in planetary sciences and exploration established by the Spain and Portugal Hub, a funding scheme issued by the Swiss Hub, as well as Europlanet sponsored sessions and meetings organised by the Central Europe, France, Ireland & UK and Southeast Europe Hubs.

February – Global Collaboration Through Workshops

Europlanet organised a first planetary science workshop in Bolivia from 6-9 January 2024. The workshop was over four days at the Institute for Geological and Environmental Research (Instituto de Investigaciones Geologicas y del Medio Ambiente UMSA) in La Paz, Bolivia. The purpose of the workshop was to provide tools for the processing and mapping of planetary surfaces, exploring different planets and analogous environments in Bolivia and Latin America.

The Bolivia workshop followed on from a Europlanet Latin America Planetary Science Workshop, ‘Connecting Earth with other Planets’, which was held in Buenos Aires from 31 October – 03 November 2023. Speakers were drawn from universities across Latin America and the Europlanet community, as well as the Argentinian national space agency (CONAE) and the European Space Agency (ESA). The workhsop stimulated many discussions and proved a very useful opportunity for networking and connecting local communities.

The Europlanet Workshop Series of events in Africa and South America was organised by the Global Collaboration and Integration Task of the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project. We look forward to further collaborations with colleagues around the world in 2025.

January – GMAP Geology and Planetary Mapping Winter School 2024

The annual Geology and Planetary Mapping Winter School aims to introduce scientists and amateur enthusiasts to geological mapping of other planetary bodies. The fourth edition of the school ran synchronously (with live sessions) in the week 22-26 January 2024, and asynchronously (allowing participants to work at their own pace) on the Streavent platform until the end of February 2024. The focus of the 2024 school was geologic mapping aspects of Venus, icy satellites and small bodies. The programme was largely hands-on, with the inclusion of seminars and time for asynchronous interaction and individual or project mapping work. The school attracted more than 590 registrations from 75 countries around the world. 

Each planetary body was introduced, with participants guided through hands-on activities such as the individual completion of a small mapping area. At the end of each day, specific time slots were dedicated to seminars, which provided insights, perspectives, and additional knowledge on related topics. The event was co-funded by the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project’s GMAP teams at the University of Padova and Constructor University. 

All materials and videos from the 2021-2024 editions of the Winter School are freely available, and registration for the 2025 edition is now open at: https://www.planetarymapping.eu

Register for the 2025 Europlanet GMAP Winter School

December 23, 2024

Registration Open for the 2025 Europlanet GMAP Winter School

The GMAP Winter School is focused on the production of planetary geological maps of a range of Solar System bodies. The Winter School, established in 2021, builds on earlier editions.

The 2025 edition will cover introductory knowledge about planetary data, coordinate reference systems and software tools, the geology and specific key features on the surface of Venus, Mercury, the Moon and Mars.

The school will run synchronously in the week 10-14 February 2025, and asynchronously on the Streavent platform for the following month (February/March 2025). 

  • The school is free of charge;
  • The registration is open from 23 December 2024 until the end of February 2025;
  • Upon registration participants will be able to access materials either in real-time or at their pace;
  • Registered participants will have Q&A access via the dedicated Streavent platform until 28 February 2025;
  • Registered participants wll have the right, provided they complete and deliver their mapping tasks, to receive a certificate.
Register
Find out more

Ariel Data Challenge 2024 Winners Announced!

December 11, 2024

Ariel Data Challenge 2024 Winners Announced!

International collaboration leads to innovative solutions for exoplanet atmosphere analysis

The Ariel Data Challenge, a global competition focused on advancing research in space science and exoplanets, has concluded its 2024 round with remarkable results.

The Data Challenge offers participants an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research in the fascinating field of exoplanet atmospheres. Each year, the challenge focuses on a different problem related to the Ariel mission and space science. This year’s challenge focused on overcoming various noise sources, such as “jitter noise” caused by spacecraft vibrations, which can complicate the analysis of spectroscopic data used to study exoplanet atmospheres.

The 2024 edition attracted 1,414 participants, based in 75 countries around the world, who competed for the $50,000 prize pool. Over the course of three months, the participants generated a remarkable 23,024 submissions, averaging more than 200 submissions per day.

In an impressive field of competitors, six teams distinguished themselves:

1st Place: Kohki Horie (PhD student) and Yamato Arai (Master’s student) from the University of Tokyo (Team c-number + daiwakun)
2nd Place: Jeroen Cottaar, Data Scientist at ASML (Team Jeroen Cottaar)
3rd Place: Vincent Debout and Sébastien Goulet from CS Group (Team Space Coder)
4th Place: Shlomo Ron (Team greySnow)
5th Place: Team Youri + Pascal
6th Place: Dmitrii Rudenko from LMU Munich (Team Through the Thorns to the Star)

Most of the winning teams will be presenting their solutions at the prestigious NeurIPS 2024 conference on December 14th, 2024.

This groundbreaking challenge was made possible through a collaborative effort led by the UCL Centre for Space Exochemistry Data, bringing together an impressive international team of academic partners including the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, Cardiff University, Sapienza Università di Roma, and the Institut Astrophysique de Paris (Sorbonne Université, CNRS).

The Ariel Data Challenge 2024 was generously sponsored by the Kaggle Competitions Research Program and the Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales. The competition also benefited from the support of a consortium of leading space agencies and institutions, including the UK Space Agency, European Space Agency, Europlanet Society, STFC RAL Space, and STFC DiRAC HPC Facility.

Ariel Data Challenge Lead, Dr Gordon (Kai Hou) Yip said, “I want to give a big shout-out to our winners who really stood out in this intense competition. I can’t thank everyone enough who put in their time and energy over these past three months. Your work is what helps us break new ground in data analysis and really push the envelope of what we can achieve in this field. ”

The Ariel Data Challenge 2024 represents a significant milestone in the ongoing efforts of the Ariel Mission to explore and understand the complex environments of exoplanets, paving the way for future breakthroughs in this dynamic field of space exploration.

Ariel Website

Ariel Data Challenge 2024 website

Issue 7 of the Europlanet Magazine is out now!

September 4, 2024

Issue 7 of the Europlanet Magazine is out now!

In this issue:

In Focus

A round up of news from Europlanet and the planetary community, including:

The cover of Issue 7 of the Europlanet Magazine shows a researcher at the Makgadikgadi salt pans in Botswana kneeling to examine a sample. She is wearing overalls with high-vis strips and a sun hat. The sky is blue and the foreground is pale grey and dusty.
Cover of Issue 7 of the Europlanet Magazine.

News from Europlanet
• Beyond the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure
• Berlin Welcomes EPSC2024 
• Early Career Events at EPSC2024
• Inspired By Other Worlds Arts Contest 2024
• EPSC-DPS 2025
• Incoming Chair of EPSC
• Juice Science Webinar Series
• EPEC Annual Week 2024
• Launch of ESFRI Landscape Analysis 2024
• SPIDER Spies Atmospheric Escape at Venus

Community News
• Ariel Data Challenge 2024
• Workshop at ATOMKI
• Tatra Workshop
• 56th Conference On Variable Star Research
• Europlanet Early Career Prize for Best Iberian Thesis
• Incoming Chair of Germany Hub
• Inspiring Women
• Ireland-UK Hub Meeting
• PLANETOEXOBIO 2024

Field Notes from a Planetary Expedition

Niamh Shaw reports on her experiences participating in an expedition into the remote, Mars-like salt pans of Botswana to study the subsurface geology.

Planetary Perspectives: Meet the New Europlanet Society Board

This edition of Planetary Perspectives highlights opportunities within space industry for early careers in an interview with Yoga Barrathwaj Raman Mohan (Blue Skies Space Ltd/Europlanet Industry Team).

Europlanet Telescope Network: Small-Scale Facilities Lead to Large-Scale Successes

As the Europlanet Telescope Network celebrates its fourth birthday, Gražina Tautvaišienė (Vilnius University, Lithuania), Guenter Kargl (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria) and Anita Heward (University of Kent, UK) reflect on the achievements to date.

Engaging With Embassies

Nigel Mason (Coordinator of Europlanet 2024 RI) gives guidance on how to approach embassies and an example of the outcome of a collaboration between embassies in the UK and Hungary.

Little Venus in the Middle of the Atlantic

Uli Köhler (DLR, Germany) reports on an expedition to Iceland that is helping to prepare for NASA and ESA missions to Venus at the beginning of the next decade.

The Future of Sample Return

Peter McArdle, Hans Huybrighs, J D Prasanna Deshapriya and Ottaviano Rüsch of the Europlanet Early Careers (EPEC) Future Research Working Group interview Enrica Bonato, who developed the sample return lab at at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin.

SPIDER: Supporting Space Weather Studies Through the Solar System

Nicolas André (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, France) and Andrea Opitz (HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungary) describe how Europlanet’s SPIDER services are supporting planetary space weather studies and Solar System missions.

Beautiful But Not Hospitable – A Sensory Tour of the Solar System’s Planets

Boyko Ranguelov (Bulgarian Academy of Science and Arts, Bulgaria) considers how human senses might respond to objects in the Solar System.

What Do You Think a Comet Smells Like?

Anita Heward (Europlanet/University of Kent, UK) and Thibaut Roger (University of Bern, Switzerland) report on reactions to an unusual scent at the Swiss Comic Con.

Workshops for Global Collaboration

Barbara Cavalazzi (University of Bologna, Italy) reviews a series of workshops organised by Europlanet in Africa and South America.

Stories of Planetary Mapping

Riccardo Pozzobon and Matteo Massironi (University of Padova, Italy) explains how Europlanet’s GMAP activity has created infrastructure to support geological mappers around the world.

Commkit – Should You Augment or Virtualise Your Reality?

Thibaut Roger (University of Bern/NCCR PlanetS, Switzerland) examines how to incorporate VR and AR in your outreach and communication.

The Last Word – Europlanet Beyond 2024

Ann Carine Vandaele, President of the Europlanet Society, and Nigel Mason, Coordinator of the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) reveal a new phase for Europlanet.

Download Issue 7

The Ariel Data Challenge 2024

August 2, 2024

The Ariel Data Challenge 2024 is calling all data scientists, astronomers, and AI enthusiasts to help tackle one of astronomy’s most complex and important data analysis problems—extracting faint exoplanetary signals from noisy space telescope observations.

The NeurIPS 2024, a world-renowned machine learning conference, will feature an exciting competition based on the Ariel Space Mission. This contest offers participants a unique chance to contribute to cutting-edge research in the fascinating field of exoplanet atmospheres. With a substantial prize pool of $50,000 USD at stake, the competition aims to attract top talent and innovative solutions.

Find out more

An end and a new beginning

An end and a new beginning

As the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) comes to an end, the Project Coordinator Prof Nigel Mason reflects on the highlights, achievements and outcomes of the last 4.5 years, and looks forward to the next steps for Europlanet.

Europlanet 2024 RI logo

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

31st July marked the end of the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) and, with it, the completion of a series of EC-funded projects over the course of some twenty years. Europlanet 2024 RI was built upon a rich heritage of Transnational Access programmes, Virtual Access services (most notably the VESPA and SPIDER platforms) and networking activities, but has advanced the field and community still
further with:

  • The initiation of the Europlanet Telescope Network.
  • The inclusion of geological mapping and machine learning tools and services.
  • Extended international collaborations with partners in Africa, South America and Korea.
  • Strategic investment in upgrades to facilities to better-simulate and understand diverse and extreme planetary environments.

During Europlanet 2024 RI, we have provided services that have allowed the European planetary science community to continue to lead the world in pioneering research. We have supported over 300 researchers in their visits and research while providing access to a vast array of databases and tools for planetary and space science research through our Virtual Access programmes. We have been integral to
more than 230 publications, and there are many more to come!

I contend that today it is almost impossible to view European planetary science without the presence of Europlanet. The annual Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) regularly attracts over 1200 delegates and has grown to become the recognised European meeting point of the planetary community. The Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) network supports the next generation of researchers, who will become the PIs of future missions! Europlanet is referenced in the strategic landscape analysis for European research infrastructures.

Throughout Europlanet 2024 RI, we have been planning for the sustainability of the Europlanet portfolio to ensure that twenty years of research and community work will continue into its third decade. I am therefore delighted to announce that, although Europlanet 2024 RI ends today, Europlanet is ready to continue its work and ambition.

Last year, we set up a not-for-profit association (Europlanet AISBL) that means we now have the legal structure in place to operate sustainably. In September 2024, we will be launching a new membership programme for organisations, in addition to the individual membership programmes we have been running since 2018. This new funding model will enable us to carry on our core activities, including:

  • Mobility programmes, with access to facilities, telescopes and expert exchanges.
  • Training and mentoring of early career planetary scientists and the wider community, including the Planetary Mapping Winter School.
  • Support for the community at a grass-roots level through travel bursaries, prizes and small grants.
  • Sustaining and growing our community through EPSC, strategic partnerships and other activities in all regions of Europe and internationally.
  • Ensuring the voice of the planetary science community is heard in important strategic fora in Europe and internationally.

An exciting aspect of moving beyond the EC-funded project is that we are not limited to a fixed set of beneficiaries. Henceforth, Europlanet is open to everyone, so any laboratory or research group working in the field will be able to join. With over 200 planetary-related organisations in Europe alone, that is already a sizeable pool of potential members — for a fee that is typically less than one open-access publication charge!

When organisational membership opens at EPSC, I would suggest that each of you ask your institution to join for at least one-year with a small amount from your project overheads to ensure that you are able to ensure your own legacy of Europlanet 2024 RI post-project. And, of course, we encourage you all to join as individual members. It is a small amount to support Europlanet, which is your community, designed and created through all your efforts.

A summary of our plans for Europlanet Beyond 2024 is online now, and further details will be circulated over the summer for discussion at EPSC and our final Council meeting.
In the meantime, I wish to end with many thank yous:

  • Thank you to the Europlanet 2024 RI Consortium for the constant camaraderie and team spirit – we worked through the Covid-19 pandemic, and all the subsequent issues and changes we had to make, to deliver everything we had promised despite the challenges.
  • Thank you for the enthusiasm and dedication with which everyone addressed all the Europlanet 2024 RI tasks.
  • Thank you for delivering a truly extraordinary set of scientific and technical results that have ensured our community is at the forefront of one of the greatest endeavours of humanity – exploring our Solar System and beyond.

While everyone involved has played an essential part in Europlanet 2024 RI’s success I would like to express particular thanks to the Europlanet Office team:

  • Susmita Datta, without whom we would never have been able to run this project and secure Europlanet’s future. Her efforts for all of us were (and are) remarkable, not least in engaging with the Commission so tirelessly and ensuring all their staff were supportive of our many requests. She will be chasing us for those final reports to be presented at the final Council meeting in Berlin.
  • Anita Heward, who has lived Europlanet almost since its inception in 2004 and through whom so much of the recognition of Europlanet beyond our own community has been achieved. Europlanet 2024 RI is just one part of her ‘lifetime work’ for Europlanet community.
  • Alicia Barron, Zofia Kicinova and Rosemary Stevens for their inexhaustible work on the complexity of the project finances (Rosemary will be pestering you for your financial reports now).
  • Callum Piper, for whom this was his first full-time employment and who has taken on any task we have thrown at him. Note that Callum will continue to work with us and will be your main contact point in the new future of Europlanet.

Finally, to the whole Europlanet 2024 RI team, a personal thank you for making the last years ones in which I felt I was amongst a remarkable group of people who have made a significant impact in both science and the community. It has truly been a pleasure and privilege to be the coordinator of Europlanet 2024 RI which I will always look back upon as a highlight not only of my career but my life.

And now we move on into those ‘sunlight uplands’ not only on the Earth but all those other planets and moons out there…

With very best wishes,

Nigel Mason

Explore Interactive Planets with Aladin

April 22, 2024

Explore Interactive Planets with Aladin

The Aladin Sky Atlas suite enables users to visualise and manipulate digitised astronomical images or full surveys, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases, and interactively access related data and information from astronomical archives. Using the Hierarchical Progressive Surveys (HiPS) methodology, developed by the Strasbourg Astronomical Data Center (CDS) at the Universite de Strasbourg/CNRS, multiple Solar System bodies can be explored through the Aladin Lite planets explorer or  full list of available planetary maps on Aladin Desktop.

Earth can also be explored with Aladin. Thomas Boch recently created a new HiPS combining Earth elevation data with hillshading; with the pointer tool, you can even get OpenStreetMap information on local features.

Acknowledgements

CDS work toward enabling data access and visualisation of planetary surface data has been partly supported by the Europlanet 2024 RI project. Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.

BepiColombo Spies Escaping Oxygen and Carbon in Unexplored Region of Venus’s Magnetosphere

April 12, 2024

BepiColombo Spies Escaping Oxygen and Carbon in Unexplored Region of Venus’s Magnetosphere

A fleeting visit of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Venus has revealed surprising insights into how gases are stripped away from the upper layers of the planet’s atmosphere. 

Detections in a previously unexplored region of Venus’s magnetic environment show that carbon and oxygen are being accelerated to speeds where they can escape the planet’s gravitational pull.  The results have been published today in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Lina Hadid, CNRS researcher at the Plasma Physics Laboratory (LPP) and lead author of the study said: “This is the first time that positively charged carbon ions have been observed escaping from Venus’s atmosphere. These are heavy ions that are usually slow moving, so we are still trying to understand the mechanisms that are at play. It may be that an electrostatic ‘wind’ is lifting them away from the planet, or they could be accelerated through centrifugal processes.”

Unlike Earth, Venus does not generate an intrinsic magnetic field in its core. Nonetheless, a weak, comet-shaped ‘induced magnetosphere’ is created around the planet by the interaction of charged particles emitted by Sun (the solar wind) with electrically charged particles in Venus’s upper atmosphere. Draped around the magnetosphere is a region called the ‘magnetosheath’ where the solar wind is slowed and heated.

On 10 August 2021, BepiColombo passed by Venus to slow down and adjust course towards its final destination of Mercury. The spacecraft swooped up the long tail of Venus’s magnetosheath and emerged through the nose of the magnetic regions closest to the Sun. Over a 90-minute period of observations, BepiColombo’s instruments measured the number and mass of charged particles it encountered, capturing information about the chemical and physical processes driving atmospheric escape in the flank of the magnetosheath.

Early in its history, Venus had many similarities to Earth, including significant amounts of liquid water. Interactions with the solar wind have stripped away the water, leaving an atmosphere composed mainly of carbon dioxide and smaller amounts of nitrogen and other trace species. Previous missions, including NASA’s Pioneer Venus Orbiter and ESA’s Venus Express have made detailed studies of the type and quantity of molecules and charged particles that are lost into space. However, the missions’ orbital paths left some areas around Venus unexplored and many questions still unanswered.

Data for the study were obtained by BepiColombo’s Mass Spectrum Analyzer (MSA) and the Mercury Ion Analyzer (MIA) during the spacecraft’s second Venus flyby. The two sensors are part of the Mercury Plasma Particle Experiment (MPPE) instrument package, which is carried by Mio, the JAXA-led Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter.

“Characterising the loss of heavy ions and understanding the escape mechanisms at Venus is crucial to understand how the planet’s atmosphere has evolved and how it has lost all its water,” said Dominique Delcourt, researcher at LPP and the Principal Investigator of the MSA instrument. 

Europlanet’s SPIDER space weather modelling tools enabled the researchers to track how the particles propagated through the Venusian magnetosheath.

“This result shows the unique results that can come out of measurements made during planetary flybys, where the spacecraft may move through regions generally unreachable by orbiting spacecraft,” said Nicolas André, of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP) and lead of the SPIDER service.

A fleet of spacecraft will investigate Venus over the next decade, including ESA’s Envision mission, NASA’s VERITAS orbiter and DAVINCI probe, and India’s Shukrayaan orbiter. Collectively, these spacecraft will provide a comprehensive picture of the Venusian environment, from the magnetosheath, down through the atmosphere to the surface and interior.

“Recent results suggest that the atmospheric escape from Venus cannot fully explain the loss of its historical water content. This study is an important step to uncover the truth about the historical evolution of the Venusian atmosphere, and upcoming missions will help fill in many gaps,” added co-author, Moa Persson of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics.

Publication details:

Hadid et al. BepiColombo observations of oxygen and carbon ions in the flank of Venus induced magnetosphere. Nature Astronomy, 12 April 2024.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02247-2

DOI: 10.1038/s41550-024-02247-2

Images

Schematic view of planetary material escaping through Venus magnetosheath flank. The red line and arrow show the region and direction of observations by BepiColombo when the escaping ions (C+, O+, H+) were observed.
Schematic view of planetary material escaping through Venus magnetosheath flank. The red line and arrow show the region and direction of observations by BepiColombo when the escaping ions (C+, O+, H+) were observed. Credit: Thibaut Roger/Europlanet 2024 RI/Hadid et al.

Download image file as: JPG | PNG | PDF

Science Contacts

Dr Lina Hadid
Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (LPP)
Palaiseau
France
lina.hadid@lpp.polytechnique.fr

Dr Dominique Delcourt
Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (LPP)
Palaiseau
France
dominique.delcourt@lpp.polytechnique.fr

Dr Moa Persson
Institutet för Rymdfysik (IRF)
Swedish Institute of Space Physics
Uppsala
Sweden
moa.persson@irf.se

Dr Nicolas André
Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP)
Toulouse
France
Nicolas.andre@irap.omp.eu

Media Contacts

Anita Heward
Press Officer
Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI)
+44 7756 034243
aheward@europlanet-society.org

Thibaut Roger
Press Officer
Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI)
thibaut.roger@science-elegance.com

Further Information

About ISAS/JAXA

In October 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was established as an independent administrative institution, integrating the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan (NAL). ISAS became one of four principal sections within the newly established organization. Its mission is to advance space science – scientific research conducted in outer space – in Japan, mainly by collaboration with universities. It also actively contributes to JAXA’s and Japan’s entire space development. 

ISAS’s new efforts and results in space science are published in Japan and shared with the international community, thus promoting JAXA’s status and enhancing Japan’s intellectual reputation in the world.

Web: https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/

Twitter: @ISAS_JAXA_EN

About Europlanet

Since 2005, Europlanet has provided Europe’s planetary science community with a platform to exchange ideas and personnel, share research tools, data and facilities, define key science goals for the future, and engage stakeholders, policy makers and European citizens with planetary science.

The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149 to provide access to state-of-the-art research facilities and a mechanism to coordinate Europe’s planetary science community. The project builds on a €2 million Framework 6 Coordination Action (EuroPlaNet), a €6 million Framework 7 Research Infrastructure (Europlanet RI) and a €10 million Horizon 2020 Research Infrastructure (Europlanet 2020 RI) funded by the European Commission. 

The Europlanet Society promotes the advancement of European planetary science and related fields for the benefit of the community and is open to individual and organisational members. The Society’s aims are:

  • To expand and support a diverse and inclusive planetary community across Europe through the activities of its 10 Regional Hubs. 
  • To build the profile of the sector through outreach, education and policy activities
  • To underpin the key role Europe plays in planetary science through developing links at a national and international level. 

Europlanet 2024 RI project website: www.europlanet-2024-ri.eu

Europlanet Society website: www.europlanet-society.org   

Follow on Twitter via @europlanetmedia

Join the VESPA 2024 Warsaw Workshop – Extended Deadline

February 29, 2024

Join the VESPA 2024 Warsaw Workshop – Extended Deadline for Open Call for Planetary Science Projects! 

We are delighted to extend an invitation to the scientific community for the VESPA 2024 open call, a unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in advancing Planetary Science and Solar System data accessibility. Aligned with the Europlanet 2024 RI programme, the VESPA activity is dedicated to creating an interoperable system grounded in the principles of Open Science. Here are three compelling reasons to consider participating in the VESPA 2024 open call:

  1. Amplify Your Impact: By joining the open call, you have the opportunity to contribute to the expansion of the VESPA interface. Up to 5 projects will be selected, allowing you to showcase your expertise and significantly enhance the data content available to the scientific community.
  2. Guidance and Collaboration: If your project is selected, you will be invited to a face-to-face workshop at the Space Research Centre Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, from April 22 to 26, 2024. This workshop will provide a unique opportunity to collaborate with experts and receive guidance in designing and setting up your project. Follow-up teleconferences in March/April 2024 will further support the finalization of the selected services.
  3. Contribute to Open Science: The VESPA initiative aligns with the principles of Open Science, fostering transparency, collaboration, and accessibility. By participating, you actively contribute to the development of an interoperable system that promotes the sharing of Planetary Science and Solar System data, advancing the field as a whole.

Don’t miss this chance to be at the forefront of cutting-edge research and make a lasting impact on Planetary Science. Submit your project proposal for the VESPA 2024 open call and be part of a community dedicated to advancing our understanding of the Solar System.

The deadline for proposals has been extended to 8 March 2024.

For more information and to submit your project proposal, visit the VESPA 2024 Open Call Website.

EXPLORE – Career Profiles

February 14, 2024

EXPLORE – Career Profiles

Europlanet’s sister-project, EXPLORE, has been funded by the European Commission to develop Machine Learning and advanced visualisation tools to support the astronomy and planetary communities. One of the real strengths of the EXPLORE project is the diverse skills-set of the team. As the project comes to a close, we’ve asked people working on the project to reflect on their careers, their inspirations and the advice that they would pass on. Click on the images below to read their career profiles. If they look familiar, many of the team are also part of the Europlanet 2024 RI project’s GMAP activity and comms team.

Nick Cox
Albert Zijlstra
Anita Heward
Giacomo Nodjoumi
Angelo Pio Rossi
Javier Suárez
Iain McDonald
Manuela Rauch
Andree Genot
Lian Greijn
Vix Southgate.

We have produced an edited set of the profiles for download:

Download All Career Profiles

EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.

Call for Submission – Atlas of Planetary Geological Maps

February 12, 2024

Call for Submission – Atlas of Planetary Geological Maps

The Europlanet 2024 RI GMAP infrastructure has opened a call for contributions for an Atlas of Planetary Geological Maps.

The Atlas aims to provide examples of geological maps of planets and small bodies to highlight different mapping approaches and adopted methodologies in various environments and for different purposes.
This collection is thought to provide guidance and inspiration to students and scientists willing to approach geological mapping in different planetary contexts. Thus, contributions focused on specific mapping tools and workflows will be warmly welcome.

Planetary Mapping illustration.
Banner and Illustration: Image Creator from Designer (Bing/DALL-E)

Given the didactic purpose of the volume, the maps can be also excerpts of already published maps, but they must be focused on definite geological environments and specifically accompanied with thoughtful explanations of the adopted work-flows and mapping tools.

The volume will have an ISBN number provided by ISPRA through the Geological Survey of Italy.

All the geological maps selected for the Atlas, and their underlying datasets, will also be included in the Europlanet-GMAP data portal, and relevant repositories for public use.

The volume will have a format of A4 cm with A3 maps. The exact number of pages for each contribution will be defined after having received the indications of interest.

As reference for the foreseen final product, you can check the ISPRA atlas “Mapping Geology in Italy”.

The received manuscripts will be revised by the editors, we do not foresee external reviews, specifically for already published maps, and map-related scientific results.

The final PDF will be openly accessible online.

Hard copies will be limited in number.

An indication of interest to submit your mapping work with a brief description of the topic should be sent to lucia.marinangeli@unich.it by Feb. 29.

Tentative Timeline:

Indication of Interest: February 29, 2024
Submission deadline: 15 May 2024
Contributions acceptance: June 2024
Advance publication of contributions Summer 2024

Editor:

Lucia Marinangeli and Marco Pantaloni – lead editors (& contacts)

Matteo Massironi, Riccardo Pozzobon, Angelo Pio Rossi, Monica Pondrelli, Pierre-Antoine Tesson, Ivan López Ruiz-Labranderas, Giulia Alemanno

EXPLORE Career Profiles: Iain McDonald

December 31, 2023

EXPLORE Career Profiles

Name: Iain McDonald
EXPLORE Project Role: Lead developer of S-Phot Stellar Scientific Data Application
Professional Role and Affiliation: Research Fellow, University of Manchester
Nationality: British
Current location: Scotland

1. What did you want to be when you were 10?

I didn’t really have a clue, but I’d just learned to programme and I guessed it would involve computers. 

2. What was your favourite subject at school?

Unsurprisingly, physics!

3. What did you study at university? Why did you choose those topics and the places to study?

I studied astrophysics at St. Andrews. I had always had a passion for astronomy, space and writing, and a career in astrophysics let me combine the three. I chose St. Andrews because it was the closest university, meaning I could still help out on the family farm when I had a break.

4. How did you get your first job? How many jobs have you had since?

I am still in my first “real” job, which was a fortunate combination of my examiner needing a researcher at the same time I was finishing my PhD. My role and research has changed throughout the years, and I have had other jobs at the same time, but I’ve been fortunate to have been in this job for over 14 years.

5. What’s been the biggest piece of luck or ‘surprise twist’ you have had in your career to date?

I never expected to research the diversity of science I do today. Branching out from stars into discovering exoplanets isn’t that unusual, but I would never have guessed that I’d be publishing textbooks on genetic genealogy and papers in medieval history journals!

6. Have you had a mentor or person that inspired you? How did they help you?

 I owe a great debt of gratitude to too many people to mention by name. Whether that’s been someone who has proof-read my latest fellowship proposal, or someone who has sorted out my travel problems when I’m stuck in another country, or being taught how to correctly deal with liquid nitrogen or read an autocue. I am grateful to work in a very friendly community who are supportive of each other.

7. What are the main things you do each day?

 Poke computers until they do what I want them to. That might be programming a new form of analysis, making plots to examine data, or writing papers.

8. What do you like best about the work that you do and what do you like least?

The best part of my job are still the occasional times I get to spend the night observing on top of some remote mountaintop in an exciting part of the world. More often, I still get excited about looking through a fresh set of data and seeing parts of how the Universe works that no-one has seen before. The worst part is needing the patience to analyse this new data rigorously – I always want to write up my papers quickly at tell the world what I’ve found.

9. Do you have ambitions or things that you would like to do next?

There are so many different things I would like to do but don’t have the time for. There are many details of the Universe that I would like to uncover, I would like to create a better model for how humans have migrated across the globe, I’d like to climb every mountain, learn to play the clarinet and buy a farm of my own. But the most important thing I will do over the next few years is bring up a family!

10. What advice would you give your 10-year-old self?

Push yourself to try more things and get better at them. The more things you try, the more things you’ll like, and you never know when those things will become useful to you in the future. And don’t be so hard on the people who tell you to do your homework – they really do have your best interests at heart!

Quick CV

  • PhD (Keele 2009), MSc (Manchester 2005), MSci (St. Andrews 2004)
  • Research Fellow/PDRA, University of Manchester (2009-2024)
  • Lecturer, Open University (2020-2023)

More EXPLORE Career Profiles

EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.

EXPLORE Career Profiles: Lian Greijn

EXPLORE Career Profiles

Name: Lian Greijn
EXPLORE Project Role: Intern
Professional Role and Affiliation: Intern at Acri-ST & MSc student Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft
Nationality: Dutch
Current location: Toulouse, France.

1. What did you want to be when you were 10?

For a long time, I wanted to become a judge. However, when I was old enough to learn how monotone judicial texts are I quickly abandoned that dream. 

2. What was your favourite subject at school?

My favourite subject was history, I really like reading and I enjoyed how it offers a perspective on how past events shape our modern world.

3. What did you study at university? Why did you choose those topics and the places to study?

I am still studying and in my final year for my MSc in aerospace engineering, I also completed my BSc in this field both at TU Delft. I always had a big passion for space and was very intrigued by the complexity of space missions. They have such challenging design criteria and really push the boundaries of engineering, I wanted to learn more about how we design and develop them. I chose Delft because it has a very strong international aerospace programme.

4. How did you get your first job? How many jobs have you had since?

I am of course still studying and haven’t had my first ‘real’ job yet, but I found this internship by asking around a lot in my university. For example, by approaching professors, the alumni relation office, and people I met through career events.

5. What’s been the biggest piece of luck or ‘surprise twist’ you have had in your career to date?

I was very adamant about going to Toulouse for my internship due to the strong aerospace industry in this city and because I studied French for a semester. It is however quite tough to find a position from abroad especially as a non-native French speaker. I had found an alumnus of my university who worked here and asked if he could help me. He happened to approach my current supervisor at their kid’s schoolyard to ask if he would know a position, which is what got me on this project.

6. Have you had a mentor or person that inspired you? How did they help you?

I have been inspired by almost everyone I worked with. I think working together on assignments or just discussing problems can really help with thinking outside the box and with motivation in general.  

7. What are the main things you do each day?

As part of the project, I mostly spend my day programming in Python (and therefore also a lot of time googling issues). I also spend a bit of time working on public outreach, such as editing video tutorials. 

8. What do you like best about the work that you do and what do you like least?

I really enjoy the required creativity and problem solving that comes with programming. You constantly find a new issue and try to figure out how to solve it. Sometimes tasks seem very daunting at the start, but when you manage to solve it, it is very rewarding. 

What I like least is probably that most of the work is done just sitting behind a computer, I would love to move a little more and have a bit more of a change in scenery. 

9. Do you have ambitions or things that you would like to do next?

Mostly to graduate next year! 

10. What advice would you give your 10-year-old self?

A bit cliché but I would say to just enjoy life as a kid. I would also tell myself that I am not nearly as bad at maths as I like to make myself believe. 

Quick CV

  • Academic qualifications
    • BSc in Aerospace Engineering
  • Main or selected jobs to date: 
    • Internship at Acri-ST

More EXPLORE Career Profiles

EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.

EXPLORE Career Profiles: Giacomo Nodjoumi

EXPLORE Career Profiles

Name: Giacomo Nodjoumi
EXPLORE Project Role: Co-leader of the development of L-EXPLO and L-HEX Lunar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: PhD Candidate, Constructor University
Nationality: Italian
Current location: Bremen, Germany.

1. What did you want to be when you were 10?

Space game developer, professional bass player, fighter jet pilot/astronaut… I had too many different interests and dreams.

2. What was your favourite subject at school?

Natural Sciences and informatics were the most interesting for me. But I also enjoyed chemistry and English. I really disliked humanities; now I regret that I was not more interested in those fields.

3. What did you study at university? Why did you choose those topics and the places to study?

Both my Bachelor’s and Master’s were in geology, so I mainly studies scientific fields, from chemistry to petrography and so on. My Master’z was focused on engineering geology and risk assessment and management, so the topics shifted a bit to more practical problems for risk assessment and mitigation, such as slope stability or geophysics, remote sensing and so on.

I chose these subjects for the love of natural sciences, and the desire to know more about our Earth. The Master’s was chosen essentially for the course in remote sensing (feeding my nerdy side).

4. How did you get your first job? How many jobs have you had since?

My Master’s thesis supervisor offered me one, since I made a working prototype of a multi-camera instrument for monitoring landslide. I’ve had two jobs including my actual position. The first one in the company of my supervisor, but it lasted only for three months, it was not fulfilling my expectations.

5. What’s been the biggest piece of luck or ‘surprise twist’ you have had in your career to date?

A colleague and close friend, aware of my passion for remote sensing and space, put me in contact with my current PhD supervisor. Since I always thought that working in planetary science was impossible for me, it was a life-changing event, especially since I had to move to another country for longer periods of time. The ‘surprise twist’ (even if I would describe it as a very, very biggest piece of bad luck for the whole world) was that the Covid-19 pandemic started almost immediately after my arrival in Bremen.

6. Have you had a mentor or person that inspired you? How did they help you?

No one in particular, maybe Baden-Powell (founder of the Scout Movement) inspired me in my “youth days”, but since then I’d say that any person that I met, lived with, or worked with, left me some sort of lesson which helped me grow up in different aspects of my life.

One of Baden-Powell’s mottos, ‘Estote Parati,’ which translates to ‘Be Prepared’ in English, inspired me to be ready for everyday challenges. Additionally, a point of the Scout’s Law, “A Scout’s duty is to be useful and to help others”, motivated me to strive to be a better person. 

7. What are the main things you do each day?

Drink coffee, analyse planetary data, develop Python tools, read scientific papers, write papers for my PhD, keep updated with trending technologies and – last but not least – drink more coffee!

8. What do you like best about the work that you do and what do you like least?

I really like the fact that I am pursuing almost all my passions, even if it can be very stressful and challenging.

9. Do you have ambitions or things that you would like to do next?

I would like to continue developing something that may help future generations that wants to join the planetary science community.

10. What advice would you give your 10-year-old self?

I know that may sounds a classic answer but “Listen to your mother, think less, enjoy life more, and do more exercises!”

Quick CV

  • Academic qualifications
    • Bachelor’s in Geology
    • Master’s in Engineering Geology and Risk Assessment
    • PhD Candidate in Planetary Sciences
  • Main or selected jobs to date: 
    • MsC in Engineering Geology (2016-2019)
    • Junior Remote Sensing Analyst (2019-2020)
    • PhD Candidate in planetary sciences (2020-Present)

More EXPLORE Career Profiles

EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.

EXPLORE Career Profiles: Angelo Pio Rossi

EXPLORE Career Profiles

Name: Angelo Pio Rossi
EXPLORE Project Role: Lead developer of the L-EXPLO and L-HEX Lunar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: Professor of Earth and Planetary Science, Constructor University
Nationality: Italian
Current location: Bremen, Germany.

1. What did you want to be when you were 10?

Oscillating in between a coroner, an archaeologist, and a fossil (or mineral) hunter. I realised later a geologist is a bit of all of them. And medicine was not my thing anyway.

2. What was your favourite subject at school?

Natural sciences, and later Latin and Earth Sciences. Old dead things, mostly.

3. What did you study at university? Why did you choose those topics and the places to study?

I studied geology. I went through my high school years forgetting my childhood’s visceral attraction to geology, and somehow it came out again in the end. There was a geoscience program just started (the department was founded just 2-3 years before) in a nearby city, and I enrolled. That was it. 

4. How did you get your first job? How many jobs have you had since?

A PhD stipend perhaps does not quite qualify as job, but in the years I was doing my PhD, I also worked for a little while as a surveyor for the Italian geological mapping programme, as a new edition of the local systematic geological map was being prepared. Funnily enough, back then we were experimenting with digital mapping. Only, technology was not like now (digital mapping with tablets is nowadays quite normal): we had clunky devices, and obscure software that I goofily adapted from something developed by USGS in Alaska (and actually kindly provided by them).

I was then at ESA in the Netherlands for some years, then at ISSI in Switzerland, and at Constructor (formerly Jacobs University) for the last decade.

5. What’s been the biggest piece of luck or ‘surprise twist’ you have had in your career to date?

To be honest I had many lucks, but none uniquely shaped my career. They did shape my view on things, though. Since you ask, let me try and recall a small selection:

  • When I was working for my undergraduate thesis and, later, during my PhD, the lab hosting me had a few visitors and researchers. I want to list few of them: Goro Komatsu (later he became a professor at my Alma Mater), Jens Ormö (he is at CAB in Madrid now), and for a sabbatical also Paul Geissler (at USGS Flagstaff now, back then at University of Arizona), and shortly people like Jeff Kargel (UoA). For me, that was a very enriching time, being exposed to many research topics, but mostly different people, and backgrounds. You don’t have time for anecdotes now, maybe one day…
  • Later, when I was at ESA as research fellow, I had the luck – truly, this time, as I was there between 2005 and 2008 – to be involved with Mars Express, a mission that was in its early phases. It was then that I started appreciating openness with data (In this respect the MEX HRSC team was exemplary), rather than planetary mission experiments as exclusive club. A decade later this was one of the motivation inspiring the co-founding of OpenPlanetary
  • Finally, at ISSI in Bern, I had the luck to meet and interact with Johannes Geiss (see below), and many others. Apart from the fact that the entire ISSI staff is lovely, Johannes was an encyclopedic, deep scholar and an amazing character. 

6. Have you had a mentor or person that inspired you? How did they help you?

Yes, very much. I have a few. First and foremost my late palaeontology professor from my undergraduate times: Giovanni Jack Pallini. Then, many years later, the late Johannes Geiss, who was a legend and the funniest and most  – gently – iconoclastic scientist I have ever met. And Roger Maurice Bonnet, who is one of the most elegant leaders I recall (plus, decades later, we still chew planetary missions he has made possible…).  They helped me through their example, not just with words… with things adsorbed, and not necessarily realised immediately. 

7. What are the main things you do each day?

Curse my two cats jumping on my laptop while I work, or dipping their paws into my cup of tea. 

8. What do you like best about the work that you do and what do you like least?

  • I actually like geology because at the same time it deals with the past – the forgotten and the buried – and also what happens now, and what might happen in the future. I don’t think it is the only discipline to give this multi-scale view of things (spatial, temporal), but it is definitely one of those providing the broadest view. 
  • Regardless geology, since running projects is what I have been done in practice in all those years, what I like is to make things happen. 
  • What do I like least? Dealing with (most) academics, and their terrible time management skills.

9. Do you have ambitions or things that you would like to do next?

I prefer to answer to this question next year 😉 But if you really insist: to learn and explore new things.

10. What advice would you give your 10-year-old self?

  1. I don’t know… I tried many paths, I messed up a few, and overall, if I look back, at certain junctions where life could have gone one way or another, I realise that I am OK with what I did. I own it, even if it is not the best way according to mainstream metrics. But metrics are a bit of a trap, anyway.  There is actually a drawing that I saw a couple of years ago, and I think it is all I would like just to show to my 10 year-old self. Rather sure that he would not get it. And that is fine, too.

Quick CV

  • Academic qualifications
    • 2004 – Ph.D., IRSPS, Univ. Chieti, Italy
    • 2000 – Degree in Earth Sciences, Univ. Chieti, Italy
  • Main or selected jobs to date: 
    • 2011-present – Constructor University (Bremen, Germany)
    • 2005-2008 – European Space Agency (Noordwijk, the Netherlands)
    • 2008-2010 – International Space Science Institute (Bern, Switzerland)

More EXPLORE Career Profiles

EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.

EXPLORE Career Profiles: Javier Eduardo Suárez Valencia

EXPLORE Career Profiles

Name: Javier Eduardo Suárez Valencia
EXPLORE Project Role: Researcher on the L-EXPLO and L-HEX Lunar Scientific Data Applications
Professional Role and Affiliation: PhD Candidate in Planetary Science at Constructor University.
Nationality: Colombian
Current location: Bremen, Germany

1. What did you want to be when you were 10?

I wanted to be an astronaut, especially to go to different planets.

2. What was your favourite subject at school?

Biology.

3. What did you study at university? Why did you choose those topics and the places to study?

Geology. I choose it because there was not an astronomy program in my country, and geology was still a really interesting natural science. Eventually, I was able to link the two. 

4. How did you get your first job? How many jobs have you had since?

My first job was as a risk management geologist, doing maps for a location in Colombia. Since then, I had two other jobs.

5. What’s been the biggest piece of luck or ‘surprise twist’ you have had in your career to date?

To start my PhD in Bremen Germany. I always worked in planetary science just for passion, but now I can make a living from it.

6. Have you had a mentor or person that inspired you? How did they help you?

Yes, another Colombian geologist, Fabian Saavedra. He showed me that we can study other planets – my professor did not have any idea of how to do that. 

7. What are the main things you do each day?

Working in my PhD, advising students in Colombia, reading.

8. What do you like best about the work that you do and what do you like least?

What I most enjoy is looking at spatial data of planetary surfaces to understand its geology. I do not enjoy debugging code!

9. Do you have ambitions or things that you would like to do next?

I want to be a university professor in a Colombian university.

10. What advice would you give your 10-year-old self?

The Universe is big and full of wonders. No matter what happens do not lose your curiosity to learn from it!

Quick CV

  • Education
    • (2021-ongoing) PhD candidate in Planetary Science, Constructor University, Bremen, Germany.
    • (2015-2018) MSc in Geology, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.
    • (2010-2015) Geologist, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.
  • Work
    • (2021-ongoing) Researcher, Constructor University, Bremen, Germany.
    • (2019-2021) Occasional professor, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.

More EXPLORE Career Profiles

EXPLORE has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101004214.

Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
Europlanet AISBL (Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif – 0800.634.634) is hosted by the Department of Planetary Atmospheres of the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Avenue Circulaire 3, B-1180 Brussels, Belgium.