Europlanet – Building a Sustainable Community and Infrastructure to Support Planetary Science and Exploration

Europlanet is a distributed research infrastructure and membership organisation that supports the planetary science and exploration communities. It offers a suite of services, developed and optimised over 20 years, including research visits to facilities and field sites, access to telescopes, mentoring and professional development programmes, bursaries, prizes, and small-scale funding schemes. Its annual meeting, the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC), is currently the largest international meeting on planetary science, attracting over 1200 participants each year that include researchers, industry representatives, policy-makers, amateur astronomers, outreach providers and teachers. Membership of Europlanet includes individuals and organisations spread over five continents, and from a cross-cutting range of scientific disciplines, languages and cultures.

Since its foundation in 2005, Europlanet has received 28 million Euros in funding through a series of grants from the European Commission (EC). However, the EC funding landscape has been changing in recent years, and the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project that ran from 2020-2024 was one of the last opportunities to secure RI funds for a specific topic, such as planetary science. Europlanet started sustainability planning in 2013, initially with the establishment of a consortium of institutions linked by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), followed by the inauguration of a society of individual members in 2018.

In February 2023, Europlanet established a non-profit Association International Sans But Lucratif (AISBL) based in Brussels, Belgium, to provide it with an independent legal structure. In December 2024, a new category of organisational membership was added. Europlanet now operates as a fully self-sustaining organisation funded through revenue from EPSC and members’ subscriptions. Core activities are run through a paid Executive Office, with most community programmes implemented by voluntary committees and working groups, including the Europlanet Early Careers (EPEC) Network, Regional Hubs, Diversity Committee, Outreach Working Group and the bodies responsible for the organisation of EPSC (the Executive Committee, Local Organising Committee, Virtual Organising Committee, and Scientific Organising Committee, as well as the session conveners).

To date, organisational membership has been driven largely by institutions wishing to include facilities in the Europlanet distributed Research and Technology Infrastructure (RTI). The number and diversity of RTI facilities offered by Europlanet’s member organisations continues to grow rapidly, and the current collection covers a wide range of experimental set-ups and disciplines. Europlanet’s flagship Transnational Access (TA) programme is designed to allow researchers from anywhere in the world, and at all career stages, to access the RTI facilities to carry out short research projects, and to foster international collaborations. The programme supports the travel and local accommodation costs of the participating researchers, as well as providing a contribution to the operating costs of the facilities. The first TA call in 2026 included 25 facilities hosted by ten organisations, with a second call with additional facilities anticipated to open in September 2026. The TA programme builds on the very successful practices initiated through EC-funding; however, Europlanet is now working towards a broader role of connecting users from both the industrial and academic sectors with planetary-relevant RTI facilities through additional programmes (e.g., commercial access, negotiated rates, or voucher systems).

With minimal centralised resources, supporting a global and highly distributed network of planetary scientists and institutions can be a challenge. In practice, this means that Europlanet must be able to deploy a proactive and collaborative community that is primed and willing to share information and resources, which in turn needs to be underpinned by the efficient and coordinated flow of information and feedback. Over several years, Europlanet has developed a comprehensive communications, dissemination and training programme that supplements standard tools and platforms (website, newsletters, webinars, social media, Discord community, etc) with more community-focused initiatives, such as the interactive online Teams Days (to better cross-network the various committees and working groups), Facility Days (to bring together facility operators, users and suppliers), and the Planetary Geological Mapping Winter School (to support and grow the international planetary mapping community).

The rapid organisational changes over recent years have required some fundamental shifts in mindset and strategy with respect to how Europlanet is presented to the community. This includes the consolidation of branding and the development of industry-focused descriptions of services. The ongoing evaluation of Europlanet activities across a range of impact areas (scientific, technological, training & education, social & societal, and economic) has helped provide a robust framework for defining and prioritising which activities should be supported with the more constrained funds available beyond the EC grants.

In this talk, we will present an overview of how we have gone about developing and implementing a sustainable programme to consolidate and build Europlanet’s community and distributed infrastructure. We will discuss the main challenges and lessons learned in transitioning to a non-profit business model that can operate independently of grants, as well as future opportunities with EC-funding for collaborations and access programmes across the Physical Sciences and Engineering domain.