Session programme

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1995 more than 4000 exoplanets have been detected to date. This indicates that planet formation is a robust mechanism and nearly every star in our Galaxy should host a system of planets.
However, many crucial questions about the origin of planets are still unanswered: How and when planets formed in the Solar System and in extra-solar systems? Are protoplanetary disks massive enough to form the planets cores? And what chemical composition do planets and primitive Solar System bodies inherit from their natal environment? Is the chemical composition passed unaltered from the earliest stages of the formation of a star to its disk and then to the bodies which assemble in the disk? Or does it reflects chemical processes occurring in the disk and/or during the planet formation process?

A viable way to answer these questions is to study the planets formation site, i.e. protoplanetary disks. In the recent years, the advent of ALMA and near-infrared/optical imagers aided by extreme adaptive optics revolutionised our comprehension of planet formation by providing unprecedented insights on the protoplanetary disks structure, both in its gaseous and solid components.
The aim of this session is to review the latest results on protoplanetary disks; to foster a comparison with the recent outcomes of small bodies space missions (e.g. Rosetta, Dawn, Hayabusa 2, OSIRIS-REX) and ground-based observations; and to discuss how these will affect the current models of planet formation and can guide us to investigate the origin of planets and small bodies and of their chemical composition.

Shape, gravity field, orbit, tidal deformation, and rotation state are fundamental geodetic parameters of any planetary object. Measurements of these parameters are prerequisites for e.g. spacecraft navigation and mapping from orbit, but also for modelling of the interior and evolution. This session welcomes contributions from all aspects of planetary geodesy, including the relevant theories, observations and models in application to planets, satellites, ring systems, asteroids, and comets.

Our knowledge of the physical and dynamical properties of the small body populations in the solar system is constantly improving, thanks to new Earth- and space-based observations, space missions as well as theoretical advances, and the appearance of the first interstellar objects. The goal of this session is to highlight recent results that are providing fundamental clues about the early stages of the solar and extrasolar systems.

The session will gather researchers of different communities for a better understanding of the evolution and properties of small bodies, in particular the parent bodies of meteorites.
It will address recent progresses made on physical and chemical properties of these objects, their interrelations and their evolutionary paths by observational, experimental, and theoretical approaches.
We welcome contributions on the studies of the processes on and the evolution of specific parent bodies of meteorites, investigations across the continuum of small bodies (comets, planetesimals, asteroids, dwarf planets) ranging from local and short-term to global and long-term (thermal and thermochemical) processes, studies of the surface dynamics on small bodies, studies of exogenous and endogenous driving forces of the processes involved, as well as statistical and numerical impact models for asteroids observed closely within recent missions (e.g., Hayabusa2, New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx).

More than 10^7 kg of extraterrestrial objects or meteoroids ranging in size from a few microns to tens of meters in diameter enter the Earth’s atmosphere every year. A small fraction of these yields free samples of extraterrestrial matter - meteorites - for laboratory study. The majority, which burn up or ablate completely in the Earth’s atmosphere, appear as visible meteors in the night sky. Recording meteor activity and modelling the process of ablation allow us to measure directly the flux of small planetary impactors. This provides the 'ground truth' for estimating present cratering rates and planetary surface ages by implication.

The application of the latest observational and modeling techniques has rendered meteor science as one of the leading avenues for investigating the nature and origin of interplanetary matter and its parent bodies. This session will provide a forum for presenting fundamental results and novel ideas in this area and informing the broader planetary science community of the interdisciplinary impact of present and future work. In particular, it will solicit contributions related to planetary defense and the impact hazard from meter-sized asteroids.

Public information:
More than 10^7 kg of extraterrestrial objects or meteoroids ranging in size from a few microns to tens of meters in diameter enter the Earth’s atmosphere every year. A small fraction of these yields free samples of extraterrestrial matter - meteorites - for laboratory study. The majority, which burn up or ablate completely in the Earth’s atmosphere, appear as visible meteors in the night sky. Recording meteor activity and modelling the process of ablation allow us to measure directly the flux of small planetary impactors. This provides the 'ground truth' for estimating present cratering rates and planetary surface ages by implication.

The application of the latest observational and modeling techniques has rendered meteor science as one of the leading avenues for investigating the nature and origin of interplanetary matter and its parent bodies. This session will provide a forum for presenting fundamental results and novel ideas in this area and informing the broader planetary science community of the interdisciplinary impact of present and future work. In particular, it will solicit contributions related to planetary defense and the impact hazard from meter-sized asteroids.

The space exploration of small Solar System bodies has provided major breakthroughs in our understanding of Solar System formation and evolution and their links with free-sample delivered meteorites.  While the two sample return missions to asteroids, Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-REx, are ongoing, a few missions have been selected by ESA (Comet Interceptor), NASA (Lucy, Psyche), JAXA (MMX), and CNSA (ZhengHe) space agencies for a launch in this decade. For the long-term, ESA is preparing its next planning cycle « Voyage 2050 », and the next NASA decadal survey for Planetary Science will be issued in 2022.
In this framework, we welcome contributions about future space missions to asteroids and comets, in terms of both science and technology. This includes both missions and instruments in development, and concepts of future missions, or instruments. We invite contributions regarding the preparation, studies, and expected results from future sample return missions, including concepts for sampling methods, cryogenic aspects, curation facilities, and analysis tools.

The NASA DART and the ESA Hera missions will allow performing the first complete asteroid deflection test by a kinetic impact, including the full characterization of the target and the impact outcome. The development of these missions is supported by a large number of activities in terms of modeling (impact process, dynamics, physical properties), instrumentation, close proximity operations and data analyses. In parallel, the inventory and spectral properties of Near-Earth Objects from Earth and from space (NEOSM) will progress substantially. This session welcomes contributions related to those fascinating topics.

In the recent years there were several attempts to obtain asteroid light curves from large surveys, both observed from the ground and space. These surveys are originally dedicated to other kind of science, like detection of microlensing events, or are transient surveys (e.g. the Zwicky Transient Factory). From space the GAIA mission and surveys dedicated to exoplanet research are the most successful in this respect. E.g. the Kepler/K2 and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) space missions have already produced a large number of asteroid light curves, and still has an enormous potential to provide rotation characteristics for additional objects from the main belt to the transneptunian region. Recent results from TESS clearly indicate that this kind of light curve observations will supersede most ground based measurements in terms of accuracy. Surveys aimed at observing the thermal emission of asteroids (e.g. NEOWISE) continue to provide important physical properties (size and albedo), not available otherwise. This EPSC 2020 session aims to summarise the results achieved in the last years using data from big surveys, discuss how these data changed our understanding of the physical properties of asteroids both as individual objects and as populations, what the challenges and possible solutions are in data reduction, what we can expect from current and upcoming missions with similar scales in the big data era, and how the role of dedicated observations of individual targets will change in the future. Papers discussing all aspects of small body surveys are welcomed, with a special emphasis on recent light curve survey results.

This session aims to highlight the new challenges and the missing bricks needed to understand the composition of primitive bodies through laboratory works and models.

The session focuses on the origin of inorganic and organic matter in different astrophysical environments and welcomes contributions on laboratory investigations and models of parent bodies of various meteorite groups, asteroids, comets and dwarf planets such as: a) experimental work related to the dust-regolith composition; b) observation and characterization of laboratory analogues; c) models of comet formation, and interior structure of asteroids with implications for parent body processes and evolution of small bodies in our solar system.

The session will also focus on experimental, theoretical and observational topics specifically aimed to the study organic matter in planetary bodies, including a) detection and evolution of organic compounds in the interstellar medium; b) characterization and evolution of the organic matter in the primitive bodies (meteorites, comets, IDPs); c) observation and distribution of the organic matter in the protosolar disk and planetary surfaces.

The on-going missions to small bodies have provided invaluable observations regarding the properties of primitive small body surfaces in different places of the Solar System, their cratering record, as well as the signatures of other processes (e.g. thermal).

The aim of this session is to open the discussion regarding the impact process on small body surfaces, the role of their physical properties and in particular their surface materials. We welcome contributions regarding:

- Studies on the latest advances in observational (e.g. spectroscopy) and experimental techniques (e.g. production of analogue materials) to characterise small bodies and their surface materials.

- Studies on laboratory impact experiments and theoretical modelling of impacts; planetary space missions which, by imaging small bodies and other planetary surfaces, allow the investigation of the outcome of collisional events (Rosetta, New Horizons, Dawn, Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx); asteroid families that are consequence of the collisional break-up of their parent bodies; collisions among asteroids of different compositions that can lead to surface contamination and material mixing. Observational and experimental studies on other processes that occur on the surfaces of small bodies such as thermal cycling etc.

Electromagnetic scattering phenomena play a key role in determining the properties of Solar System surfaces based on observations using different techniques and in a variety of wavelengths ranging from the ultraviolet to the radio. This session will promote a general advancement in the exploitation of observational and experimental techniques to characterize radiative transfer in complex particulate media. Abstracts are solicited on progresses in numerical methods to extract relevant information from imagery, photometry, polarimetry and spectroscopy in solid phase, reference laboratory databases, photometric modeling, interpreting features on planetary surfaces, mixing/unmixing methods… Software and web service applications are welcome.

The goal of this session is to cover numerical simulations and relevant laboratory investigations related to the Small Bodies (comets, KBOs, rings, asteroids, meteorites, dust), their formation and evolution, and the instruments of their exploration. This session is specially focused on the interdisciplinary approach in the development of models (formal descriptions of physical phenomena), experiments (on ground and in micro-gravity), and mathematical simulations (computational methods and algorithms of solution) of various astrophysical phenomena: (i) dusty gas cometary atmospheres; (ii) volcanic activity on icy satellites (e.g. Enceladus and Io); (iii) planetary body formation (e.g. via pebbles growth), and planetesimal dynamics.

This session will include an introduction and discussion of new and/or existing laboratory studies in simulated space-like environments and models, experimental techniques, computational methods that can address the results of analytical,experimental and numerical analysis (with respect to computational methods and algorithms of solution) on the above described studies.
Abstracts on thermophysical evolution models of small bodies interiors as well as on the modeling of atmosphere and exosphere are welcome.