ESA Envision mission (in which RSLab has the leadership of the Subsurface Radar Sounder) is currently in B1 study phase. Among the different activities in progress, specific attention is focused on the aerobreaking phase around Venus, in which the spacecraft will need to lower its orbit with thousand of passages through the planet’s atmosphere for up to two years. More details on the aerobreaking are given in the articles below.
Image credit: ESA
Elisa Sbalchiero was awarded with the second place (out of more than 220 candidates) at the 2022 Student Prize Paper Comeptition at the very prestigious 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) held in Kuala Lumpur (Malesia) for the paper “A method for focusing raw simulated radar sounder data”, co-authored with Dr. Sanchari Thakur and Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone.
Congratulations!
The H2020 ExtremeEarth project has concluded successfully, developing artificial intelligence techniques for the automatic analysis of remote sensing images. In the project RSLab had the leadership in the design and development of deep learning architectures for the Food Security use case.
An article in the Italian newspaper ‘Il Sole 24 Ore’ addresses the long link between north-eastern Italy and space, from Galileo to the JUICE mission. The RIME radar sounder (which is under the responsibility of the RSLab) on board JUICE spacecraft is mentioned as an example of excellence in space research.
Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone is ranked #2 in Italy and #242 in the world in the 2022 Edition of Top 1000 Scientists in the field of Computer Science released recently at Research.com. Details on the ranking can be found at this link.
A model of the candidate antenna for SRS – Subsurface Radar Sounder (Principal Investigator: Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone) has been recently tested by SENER in Spain. The test consisted in suspending the SRS antenna and a full-sized mockup of the EnVision spacecraft from a balloon, lifting it more than 200 m above the ground. This testing will help guide the final selection of the SRS antenna. SRS main objective is to probe the Venus subsurface up to about 1 km depth. Envision is targeting launch in the early 2030s.
More details: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2022/03/Aerial_antenna_for_Venus_mission_test
Elena Donini and Gianmarco Perantoni received the award for the Best Italian PhD and Master Theses on Geoscience and Remote Sensing by the Italian Chapter of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. Continue Reading
On Thursday February 17, Stefano Paterna successfully defended his PhD Thesis on “Advanced Methodologies for Planning and Scheduling Payload Operations for Planetary Exploration Missions”.
Congratulations Stefano!
RSLab achieved important research results in 2021 on both Earth Observation and Planetary Exploration and the related topics. Some relevant numbers are as follows:
• 32 papers published on peer-reviewed international journals in 2021
• 21 papers accepted on peer-reviewed journals (in press in 2022)
• 4800+ (Source: Google Scholar) / 3100+ (Source: Scopus) citations in 2021
• 4 projects running with the role of Principal Investigator (3 European/Italian Space Agency, 1 EU H2020)
• 4 projects running with the role of partner (2 EU H2020, 1 JPL/USC, 1 Italian Space Agency)
• Top positions of the Lab in international ranking of research
• 4 international/national awards
• 3 graduated PhD students
• Many public outreach activities (newspaper and magazine interviews, public presentations, etc.)
The figure reports the cloud of words built with the titles of the 2021 journal papers. More details are available on this website.
We wish you a Happy 2022!
A scaled model of the RIME antenna – Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (Principal Investigator: Prof. Lorenzo Bruzzone) together with a simplified model of the JUICE spacecraft is under test at ESTEC ETS Test Centre facility. Several tests were performed, for different solar array orientations, with the objective of collecting data to be compared with simulation results for design and verification approach validation.
