BepiColombo is the joint European Space Agency ESA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JAXA mission to Mercury, launched in 2018. Of the two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter has two infrared spectrometers onboard. Centrum Badań Kosmicznych PAN (CBK PAN) provided the pointing unit to the Mercury Radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer (MERTIS). In December 2024, MERTIS obtained...
The homogeneity of the chemical and isotopic compositions of the Earth and the Moon facilitates the identification of potential mineral resources present and exploitable on the Moon. The current knowledge on the geological structure of the Earth's natural satellite also allows us to state that due to the greatest geochemical and geophysical activity of the surface layer of the Moon's crust -...
The presentation will introduce a recently proposed approach for analyzing the irregular geometries of lava tubes and assessing their impact on cave stability. It is shown that irregularities can significantly influence predicted collapses and the safety conditions inside the caves. This enables preliminary estimates of lava tube dimensions on the Moon (and other planetary bodies) and allows...
