Credit
Venus - ESA, Earth - ESA, Mars - ESA © 2007 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/ RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA
Europlanet 2024 – Infrastructure for Scientific Research
The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) provides free access to the world’s largest collection of planetary simulation and analysis facilities, data services and tools, a ground-based observational network and programme of community support activities.
The Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) takes part in the project by the provision of unique datasets to support studies of planetary space weather that were obtained from space missions at Mars, Venus, and comet 67P.
IRF is at a very unique position in Europe since we have datasets of high-energy particle flux in various locations in the inner solar system. The datasets were constructed from IRF-developed sensors onboard Mars Express, Venus Express, and Rosette deployed by European Space Agency (ESA).
The infrastructure from this project allows easy access by world-wide public and researchers. High energy particle fluxes are concerns for space activities as they can easily break the spacecraft system. In addition, they threaten activities of human beings for future deep space exploration.
Studies of the evolution and propagation in the inner solar system are therefore recognized important. Our data at three locations, together with various datasets released by the other participating institutes, will accelerate researches on the characteristics and processes of space plasma in the inner solar system.
The produced dataset will be integrated into the SPIDER service.
Find out more at the Europlanet 2024 RI website.
Europlanet RI 2024 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
Project description
The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (EPN-2024-RI) will provide the pan-EU infrastructure needed to address the major scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science and strengthen Europe’s position at the forefront of space exploration.
EPN-2024-RI builds on the foundations of a series of highly successful EU-funded projects that have created the leading Virtual Observatory for planetary data and the largest, most diverse collection in the world today of field and laboratory facilities capable of simulating and analysing planetary environments.
EPN-2024-RI will provide Transnational Access (TA) to an enhanced set of world-leading field and laboratory facilities, Virtual Access (VA) to state-of- the-art data services and tools linked to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and Networking Activities (NA) to widen the user base and draw in new partners from Under Represented States (URS), non-EU countries, industry and interdisciplinary fields, and to train the next generation of RI leaders and users.
With 56 beneficiaries, from both industry and academic sectors, providing access to 31 TA facilities on 5 continents and 4 VA services linking over 100 data services and catalogues, EPN-2024-RI represents a step-change in ambition for planetary science worldwide.
Innovations include the establishment of a ground based observation network to support space based missions, the launch of an interactive mapping service to provide virtual exploration of planetary surfaces, and the development of machine learning tools for data mining to fully exploit and analyse planetary data sets. EPN-2024-RI will establish global collaborations and an international userbase for the RI through inclusion of partners in Africa, Asia and South America.
Ultimately, EPN-2024 will support the transition of this unique infrastructure to a sustainable future within the structure of the Europlanet Society.
Links
- The Europlanet 2024 RI project portal
- The SPIDER portal
- The ASPERA-4 sensor on Venus Express
- The ASPERA-3 sensor on Mars Express
- The ICA sensor on Rosetta