Session programme

Understanding the formation, evolution, composition, interior structure, and environment of Mercury is of primary interest to better understand Mercury and the role this terrestrial planet plays in the evolution of our solar system.

NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft provided many insights and surprising results regarding these goals. MESSENGER data are still under analysis and will continue to provide many important contributions to Mercury science.

However, MESSENGER also raised many questions that are still open and will be addressed by the new joint ESA/JAXA mission to Mercury, BepiColombo, which was successfully launched in October 2018. In October 2021, the first of six flybys of Mercury took place (second flyby in June 2022).

This session welcomes contributions addressing the planet’s geology, surface composition, geodesy, interior structure, exosphere, magnetosphere, gravity, and magnetic fields, based on modeling, laboratory experiments, and observations (ground-based, remote-sensing and in situ). The first analyses of BepiColombo's flyby data from Mercury are welcome. Finally, contributions of concepts of future missions to Mercury are encouraged.

Exoplanets are being discovered in large numbers thanks to recent and ongoing surveys using state-of-the-art instrumentation from the ground and from space. In the next years, new astronomical instruments will further scout our Galaxy to overcome the current observational biases in the search of alien worlds, to gain a deeper understanding of the chemical and physical properties of both exoplanets and their environments, and to unveil the processes of formation and evolution of planets and their atmospheres.

The goal of this session is to bring together the instrumentation and observational communities that are underpinning the future of this field. Contributions are invited to review ongoing programmes of exoplanet and circumstellar discs discovery and characterisation, to update on the progress of planned instrumentation programmes, and to present innovative ideas for future instrumentation.

The aim of this session is to share the knowledge and experience gained by all Mars exploration programmes, both in Europe and worldwide, to promote synergies among the various missions in operations and development.

We welcome contributions from any field of Mars science and exploration, in particular mission and instrument overviews of latest scientific results and technical developments. These include latest discoveries and new challenges for all operational orbiters (Mars Express, ExoMars TGO, Odyssey, MRO, MAVEN, Mangalyaan/MOM, Tianwen-1, Hope), surface assets (MSL, Insight, Mars2020, Tianwen-1), and preparations for the new missions (ExoMars RSP, MMX, Mars Sample Return, etc).

Almost 5000 exoplanets are now confirmed, a number rising almost daily. This impressive rate of discoveries, impulsed by the synergies between different observational techniques and space-based missions, reveals a great variety of planets and planetary systems that challenge our understanding of planetary occurrences, physical-chemistry properties, and system architectures. Since each technique and method provide only a part of the bigger picture, the confluence of different perspectives is a must.
Hence, in this session, we aim to bring together recent results and studies performed by observers, modelers, and experimentalists, and a combination of them to open discussions about the pathways that the community needs to follow to understand the exoplanetary variety fully and promote and inspire the collaboration between teams with different expertise. In particular, this session welcomes any abstract related to the following topics:

(1) groundbreaking discoveries of planets and systems of special interest (due to peculiar physical properties/orbital architectures, amenable targets for atmospheric investigations, etc.)
(2) cutting edge measurements of exoplanet properties (tidal distortions, spin rates and angles) and first tentative detections of satellite or rings;
(3) deep characterization of planetary systems and their global picture (precise measurements of radii, masses and internal planetary compositions, observed/theoretical populations, occurrences, etc.);
(4) synergies between different techniques for comprehensive exoplanet characterization (photometry, spectroscopy, radial velocities, transit timing variations, radio observations, etc.);
(5) hunting surveys from the ground- and/or space-based observatories in the search for new planets and systems.

Due to an increasing amount of data from a continuously increasing number of spacecraft in our solar system, new frameworks for rapidly and intelligently extracting information from these data sets are needed. Machine learning provides such a framework for tackling a wide range of research questions in planetary sciences.
Machine learning approaches could improve existing models, creating computationally efficient algorithms for feature classification and regression problems, e.g. solar wind time series data, planetary surface images or hyperspectral data.

We encourage submissions dealing with machine learning approaches of all levels in planetary sciences. In this session, we aim to provide an overview of the current efforts to integrate machine learning technologies into data driven space research and to highlight state-of-the art developments.

The emphasis of the session is on all aspects of the conditions in the Sun, solar wind and magnetospheric plasmas that extend the concepts of space weather and space situational awareness to other planets in our Solar System than Earth, and in particular to spacecraft that travel through it. Abstracts on space- and ground-based data analysis, theoretical modeling and simulations of planetary space weather are welcomed. The description of new services accessible to the research community, space agencies, and industrial partners planning for space missions and addressing the effects of the environment on components and systems are also strongly encouraged. This session will also summarize the planetary space weather services developed during Europlanet 2024 RI with the Sun Planetary Interactions Digital Environment Run on request.

Small-mass and small-volume sensors and instruments are holding
an increasing role in planetary missions, because they allow to
save resources and costs. Cubesat, microsatsats and nanosatellites based
missions are further encouraging the development of miniaturized
instrumentation.

This session is opened, but not restricted, to the following topics:
a) presentations of small instruments flown on previous missions,
and analysis of the data they provided; b) presentations of
small instruments, sensors and cubesats on board ongoing and
planned missions; c) studies and concepts for future instrument/payload/mission
applications; d) laboratory and testing activity related to this topic.

The 2021 launches of the DART and Lucy spacecraft inaugurated a decade-long period of sustained mission flight rates to small bodies, with some fifteen individual spacecraft set to be dispatched to a diverse set of targets: near-Earth and main belt asteroids, cometary nuclei and comet-asteroid transition objects, Jupiter Trojans and small planetary moons.

This high flight rate implies concurrent operation of multiple spacecraft in-flight which, in turn, offers unprecedented opportunities for synergistic exploitation. For example, simultaneous observations of an asteroid or comet target from different vantage points across the solar system may be used to cross-verify instrument calibration, monitor for changes of the target and/or its environment over long time periods and expand observational coverage beyond the geometric and temporal constraints of any one mission.

In addition, new Earth-based and near-Earth survey facilities stand to complement the spacecraft investigations by allowing additional target characterisation and to apply the lessons learned from the targeted in situ studies at population level.

In this session we invite contributions focusing on such coordinated observations as to allow cross-calibration of spacecraft instruments, complement target characterisation efforts and for added science value. In this way, we hope to motivate the community to generate ideas for cross-project investigations. Flight projects relevant to this call include (but are not limited to) the DART, DESTINY+, Hayabusa II, HERA, Janus, Lucy, M-ARGO, Mars Moon eXplorer, NEA Scout, Psyche, Zheng-He and Comet Interceptor missions as well as Earth-based assets such as Gaia, JWST and the Rubin telescope. 

Since the beginning of planetary exploration in the 1960s, mass spectrometers have been key to the in situ exploration of celestial bodies. These instruments enable the detection and identification of many chemical compounds and reaction chains, leading to a better understanding of extraterrestrial environments. A wide range of samples derived from planetary exospheres, atmospheres, and (sub) surfaces, as well as materials sourced from small bodies and interplanetary dust, have been analyzed to date. Legacy technologies, including heritage spaceflight mass analyzers, often represent the state-of-the-art. However, a suite of next generation mass spectrometry instruments is being developed, improving several analytical performances such as mass resolution, dynamic range and mass range among others. In this frame, High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (HRMS) instruments targeting mass resolving powers up to m/Δm > 100,000 (FWHM) and mass ranges beyond >1000 mass units, aim to provide answers to high-priority science questions previously considered inaccessible.
By increasing their respective TRLs (Technology Readiness Levels), these emerging instruments (including HRMS instruments) can be selected for new and exciting in situ space missions that support the long-term objectives of science programs across the globe, including the ESA Voyage 2050 and the NASA Planetary Science Decadal Survey.
The proposed session solicits contributions that inform on the latest advances in mass spectrometry for planetary exploration. Abstracts are invited to be submitted on the following topics:
- New spaceflight instruments concepts
- Performances characterization of laboratory prototypes of space mass spectrometers under development
- Applications of HRMS operations and analytical techniques germane to evolving community-driven science goals
- Future mission concepts made possible with the new generation of mass spectrometers

Human and robotic lunar exploration is opening new vistas and scientific understanding as humanity reaches toward the Moon again. In partnership with institutions around the globe, the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) focuses on these scientific aspects of exploration as they relate to the Moon and other airless bodies. This session will feature interdisciplinary, exploration-related science centered around the Moon as a human and robotic destination. Scientific plans and results within this session represent the broad spectrum of lunar science representing investigations of the Moon and its environment as a planetary body as well as science research uniquely enabled by being done from the Moon. Graduate students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged to submit for oral presentations.

Modern space missions, ground telescopes and modeling facilities are producing huge amount of data. A new era of data distribution and access procedures is now starting with interoperable infrastructures and big data technologies. Long term archives exist for telescopic and space-borne observations but high-level functions need to be setup on top of theses repositories to make Solar and Planetary Science data more accessible and to favor interoperability. Results of simulations and reference laboratory data also need to be integrated to support and interpret the observations.

The Virtual Observatory (VO) standards developed in Astronomy may be adapted in the field of Planetary Science to develop interoperability, including automated workflows to process related data from different sources. Other communities have developed their own standards (GIS for surfaces, SPASE for space plasma, PDS4 for planetary mission archives…) and an effort to make them interoperable is starting.

Planetary Science Informatics and Data Analytics (PSIDA) are also offering new ways to exploit the science out of planetary data through modern techniques such as: data exploitation and collaboration platforms, visualisation and analysis applications, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data fusion and integration supported by new big data architecture and management infrastructure, potentially being hosted by cloud and scalable computing.

We call for contributions presenting progresses in the fields of Solar and Planetary science databases, tools and data analytics. We encourage contributors to focus on science use cases and on international standard implementation, such as those proposed by Europlanet/VESPA (Virtual European Solar and Planetary Access) the IVOA (International Virtual Observatory Alliance), the OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium), the IPDA (International Planetary Data Alliance) or the IHDEA (International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance), as well as applications linked to the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) infrastructure.

This merged session welcomes a broad range of presentations about future missions and instrumentation, and has a particular focus on small satellites. Recent advances in small platforms make it possible for small satellites, including CubeSats, to be considered as independent or complementary elements in planetary exploration missions, for example the small probes as part of the Hayabusa 2, DART and Hera mission. Presentations on Deep Space Planetary CubeSats, e.g. the small satellites accompanying the F-class ESA mission Comet Interceptor and those selected or proposed for the NASA SIMPLEX program are welcomed. Concepts for future mission may either be an augmentation to larger missions or as stand-alone missions of their own. We encourage presentations on new Planetary science mission architectures and associated technologies, as well as dedicated instrumentation that can be developed for these applications.

The investigations of planet's interior are key to understand the origin and evolution of the planet. Seismology has proven to be a very powerful tool for determining the internal structure of Earth, leading to the direct measurement of the thickness of crust, mantle and core, as well as obtaining detailed 3-dimensional structure models.

The first successful extraterrestrial seismic experiment was carried out by the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972, when a network of seismometers was deployed along with other in situ geophysical instruments. A renaissance of planetary seismology occurred almost 50 years later, when the InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander deployed successfully a seismometer on the surface of Mars. Since its landing, on November 26, 2018, data from this mission have shown that Mars is a seismically active planet, and have placed key constraints on the thickness of the crust, core radius, and the presence of a low velocity zone in the upper mantle. Improved constraints for the interior structure of both the Moon and Mars have since been obtained through the joint analysis of seismic datasets with other geophysical observables, such as gravity, surface topography, magnetic field measurements, and heat flow.

This session invites abstracts concerning the following topics:
- Studies based on the analysis of existing extraterrestrial seismic datasets.
- Analyses of geophysical data that rely on seismic constraints or that offer information for the design of future seismic experiments.
- Works that propose new methodologies and mission concepts for future extraterrestrial seismic experiments.

The aim of this session is to discuss our current understanding on the environments of the outer planet moons and their interactions with the surrounding electromagnetic fields and particles and to discuss the pathway for upcoming and future explorations. This session covers contributions on all the outer planet moons from a variety of topics including (but not limited to) the magnetic field generation, subsurface ocean detection from fields and particles, active processes (e.g., volcanoes and plumes) and their interactions with the surrounding environments and detections, neutral atmosphere, ionosphere, aurora, plasma and dust environment, moon-ring systems, and moon-magnetosphere interaction. Contributions based on observations (both from space and from the ground), modelling, theoretical interpretation and supporting laboratory experiments and concepts for future spacecraft missions are welcome.

The exploration of the outer solar system by Galileo at Jupiter, Cassini-Huygens at Saturn, New Horizons at Pluto-Charon and Dawn at Ceres, has revealed that several icy worlds harbor subsurface salty liquid reservoirs underneath their cold surface. Such discoveries provide incentive for future exploration of the icy Galilean satellites with Europa Clipper and JUICE, and Titan with Dragonfly, and motivate several other mission projects already under consideration by space agencies. While we are entering in a new era in icy world exploration, understanding these promising worlds and preparing for their characterization requires input from a variety of scientific disciplines: planetary geology and geophysics (including active processes, e.g. plumes), atmospheric physics, life sciences, space weathering, as well as supporting laboratory studies, numerical simulations, preparatory studies for future missions and technology developments in instrumentation and engineering. We welcome abstracts that cover this full breadth of disciplines required for the characterization and future exploration of icy world systems.

Saturn's moon Titan, despite its satellite status, has nothing to envy to planets: it has planetary dimensions, a substantial and dynamic atmosphere, a carbon cycle, a variety of geological features (dunes, lakes, rivers, mountains and more), seasons, and a hidden ocean. It even now has its own mission: Dragonfly, selected by NASA in the frame of the New Frontiers program.
In this session, scientific presentations are solicited to cover all aspects of current research on Titan: from its interior to its upper atmosphere, using data collected from the Cassini-Huygens mission (2004-2017) and/or from ground-based telescopes (e.g., ALMA) and/or based on modelling and experimental efforts to support the interpretation of past and future observations of this unique world.

This session will cover all aspects of ice giant (IG) systems including (but not limited to) the atmospheric structure and composition, magnetospheres, interiors, satellites, and rings of the IGs. Interdisciplinary, crosscutting themes of ice giant planet exploration, such as the relationship to exoplanetary science and connections to heliophysics will also be considered in the session. The session will comprise a combination of solicited and contributed oral and poster presentations on new, continuing, and future studies of the ice giant systems and the importance of the ice giants to models of the formation and evolution of the giant planets and solar systems. We welcome abstracts that
• Address the current understanding of ice giant systems, including atmospheres, interiors, magnetospheres, rings, and satellites including Triton.
• Advance our understanding of the ice giant systems in preparation for future exploration, both by remote sensing and in situ.
• Discuss what the ice giants can tell us about solar system formation and evolution leading to a better understanding of the current structure of the solar system and its habitable zone as well as extrasolar systems.
• Address outstanding science questions requiring future investigations including from spacecraft, remote sensing, theoretical, and laboratory work necessary to improve our knowledge of the ice giants and their relationship to the gas giants and the solar system.
• Present concepts of missions, instruments and investigations relevant to future exploration of the ice giant planetary systems.