In the early stages of planetary exploration few space agencies were involved and space missions had limited capabilities. Nowadays, however, many nations can maintain robust space programs that continuously provide a great amount of highly complex datasets. Geological maps provide the context for all observations and interpretations of surface and subsurface processes on any solid planetary body, and their histories. Nonetheless, despite space activities becoming increasingly international, planetary geological maps are still developed almost exclusively by a single research institute in the world (USGS-USA). Thus, it is high time to improve this situation in order to maximize the scientific output of planetary missions and improve the position of Europe in this context.
Within this framework, it is undeniable that Europe has a prominent position in planetary exploration having sent missions to Moon, Mars, Venus, Titan, and even comet 67P, and leading or being involved in exploration of many other planetary bodies in the years to come (Mercury, Mars, Jovian satellites, Moon, asteroids etc.). Furthermore, human exploration of the Moon, Mars, and asteroids is one of ESA’s mid- to long-term objectives. Scheduled and future European space missions to Solar System bodies need adequate geological support to ensure successful observational strategies for orbital probes and effective landing site selection for robotic and human missions. However, despite Europe's long tradition of geological mapping of Earth and the numerous ESA missions dedicated to the study of planetary surfaces, no European institution has been able to realize an efficient program of planetary geological mapping so far.
Thus, to ensure European excellence in space science it is necessary to develop an efficient European network for geological planetary mapping which, exploiting the available datasets, can provide new products complementary to the existing ones, starting with the three main bodies of interest for Europe in the next decade: Mars, Mercury, and the Moon. At present, the methodological approach for geological mapping of planetary surfaces is mainly based on techniques developed in the 1970s which guarantees valuable products but leaves wide room for improvement considering the diversity, complexity and large amount of data collected by modern instrumentation and new sensors. PLANMAP's major focus is the integration of different datasets through data-fusion aiming at the production of highly informative geological maps. These maps include spectral information, elemental composition, absolute ages and ground truth information. They also provide the basis for subsurface 3D geological modelling and have been disseminated using dedicated WebGIS software.
PLANMAP has improved the European excellence in planetary science by:
- Preparing toolboxes and defining pipelines for innovative geological maps supporting ESA's next generation of planetary missions and future robotic and human exploration.
- Providing geological maps at different scales aiming at supporting observational strategies and target selection for orbital probes and future robotic and human exploration.
- Preparing virtual planetary reconstructions to be integrated with planetary analogues to be used for future astronaut training.
- Producing the first subsurface geo-models on planetary environments
- Giving free access to toolboxes, geological maps and virtual environments to all planetary scientists.
- Delivering cutting edge science by detailed geological analysis of integrated datasets.
