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During the first in history gravity assist flyby of the Earth-Moon system, which took place successfully between August 19 and 20, the Radar for Icy Moon Exploration (RIME) was activated and performed a wide range of tests.

During the lunar flyby, RIME was operated to acquire, for the first time since the launch of JUICE, data from the surface of a celestial body. Tests were performed by varying the radar parameters with the aim of better characterizing the functioning of RIME. First analyses of the data show that the instrument is functioning properly and resulted in the generation of the first unfocused RIME radargramme.

During the Earth flyby, RIME was operated in listen-only mode for both measuring radio signals generated by terrestrial transmissions that are useful for calibration and providing data on the Earth’s ionosphere.

More details here and on some of the media coverage reported below.

The image presents the first RIME radrgramme the lunar surface and the digital elevation model (DEM) of the area with the spacecraft groundtrack indicated by a white line. The radargram has been generated with preliminary pre-processing (RFI noise mitigation, range compression and simple pre-summing only) and is not focused yet. It shows the surface of the Moon in the area of the flyby, which is a very rough area characterized by large variations of topography as shown in the DEM.

Spectrogram measured by the RIME in listen-only mode during part of the flyby of the Earth. Many different radio frequency sources are detected and visible in the data.

 

Europa Clipper mission has launched on October 14th, 2024, toward the Jupiter moon Europa.

RSLab is part of the team of REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-surface), which is one of the main instruments on-board Europa Clipper. REASON is designed for probing Europa’s icy shell for the moon’s suspected ocean and studying the ice’s structure and thickness. The data acquired by REASON together with the data taken by RIME (Radar for Icy Mooon Exploration, under the RSLab leadership) on-board the ESA JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) spacecraft (currently in cruise toward the Jupiter system) will contribute to discover the subsurface world of the Jupiter icy moons, which is stimulating the imagination of scientists and science fiction since very long time.

The two radars, REASON and RIME, were conceived in the phase in which Juice and Europa Clipper were part of the joint EJSM mission (Europa Jupiter System Mission) which envisaged a close collaboration between ESA and NASA for the synergistic development of two probes, one from send into orbit around Ganymede (ESA’s) and the other around Europa (NASA’s). For programmatic reasons the joint mission was then separated into the two independent missions Europa Clipper and Juice, but the collaboration continued to optimize the complementarities and differences of the two radars and the related scientific objectives. With the launch of Europa Clipper, which follows that of Juice, the initial plan to have two probes dedicated to the study of Jupiter’s icy moons is effectively realized and completed.

Go Europa Clipper!

Image credits: NASA

Below some samples from the coverage of the regional and national media.

Congratulations to Milena Atanasova for receiving the Best Poster Awards at IEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) IADF Summer School on Computer Vision for Earth Observation in Benevento, Italy.

More information about the summer school at the link: https://iadf-school.org/

   

 

On August 19-20, JUICE successfully completed the world’s first Lunar-Earth gravity assist. This maneuver will allow JUICE to take a shortcut via Venus on its route to the Jupiter system.

During the flybys of the Moon on August 19 and Earth on August 20, RIME was operating and successfully acquired data on both celestial bodies. Our team at the RIME Science Operation Centre of RSLab at the University of Trento monitored RIME’s telemetry during operations and is currently analyzing the data collected during this complex maneuver.

Below some samples from the coverage of the regional, national and international media.

Nature has selected one of the images of the recent paper on lunar cave discovery published on Nature Astronomy under the coordination of RSLab in the ‘Images of the Month’ for July 2024. This prestigious achievement is related to an image of the paper that shows a 3D reconstructionsof the entrance of the cave as derived from the analysis of NASA LRO radar data and the related geological modeling. You can find the image and the related details here.

In general the paper has generated a very large attention from the media worldwide (more than 690  news outlets  according to Nature) with also funny appearence into a very popular American comedy show with Stephen Colbert (see at minute 3:50)

Below some other links to selected recent media publication (see also the news published on July 16th for many others).

Credits: the surface topography part of the image has been taken by ROC NAC data (Wagner, R. v., & Robinson, M. S. (2022). Lunar Pit Morphology: Implications for Exploration. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 127(8). 

A study, under the leadership of RSLab, has proven for the first time the existance of an accessible conduit at the bottom of a lunar Pit in the Tranbquility Sea. This has been possible by re-analayzing a synthetic aperture radar image acquired in 2010 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA with a new radar processing technology recently developed at RSLab. The study has very important scientific implications and is very relevant for shaping future exploration acitvities on the Moon.

The paper is available at this link.

The research has worlwide resonance with a huge attention from the media of all the world. Below some selected example of media coverage with dedicated interviews on the discovery.

 

Credits: Artist’s impression of an underground cave on the Moon. Credit: Elaboration of a photo by A. Romeo. LRO
3D model by NASA (Brian Kumanchik, Christian Lopez, NASA/JPL-Caltech

Time serie of high resolution land-cover maps are crucial for assessing changes in the land-cover patterns that either can affect or be induced by climate change. RSLab has the leadership of the High Resolution Land Cover project in the context of the European Space Agency – ESA Climate Change Initiative. Regional products that represent the evolution of land-cover between 1990 and 2019 at 10-30 meters resolution have been produced and are now available for Amazonia, Africa Sahel and Siberia.

These products reaveal detailed and very relevant change patterns that were not visibile in available medium resolution products.

The products are presented in a video produced in collabaration between RSLab and ESA that can be seen here.

More details on the project, the products and their impact in the media news below.

 

On April 4, Khatereh Meshkini succesfully defended her PhD Thesis on “Advanced Methods for Land Cover Mapping and Change Detection in High Resolution Satellite Image Time Series”.

Congratulations to Khatereh!

Alpine glaciers are suffering the climate change. RSLab in collaboration with the Risk Prevention and Cue Service and the Geological Service of the Province of Trento and thanks to the support of the Helicopter Unit of the Permanent Fire Brigade of Trento,  is conducting a campaign of measurements on the Marmolada glacier with a Ground Penetrating Radar to characterize the glacier bedrock and study the possibility to identify accumulation of water at the interface between ice and rocks as well as the presence of water in the ice column. After two series of measurements with high temperatures in the Summer 2023, in the past days we acquired data in winter thermal conditions with snow covering the glacier.

Some pictures and videos of the glacier during the campaign as well as some examples of media coverage can be found below.

 

The EnVision mission to Venus and the activities of RSLab in planetary exploration and Earth observation have been recently the focus of some national and regional media insights.

Below some links to TV and radio broadcasts (in italian and german).

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