The second half of 2024 is a time of endings and new beginnings, as we finish the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project and look forward to the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) in Berlin. ‘In Focus’ gives a digest of recent news and events.
Europlanet News | Community News
Beyond the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure
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The 31 July 2024 marked the end of the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) project. The €10 million programme was funded by the European Commission (EC) to provide infrastructure to address the major scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science and strengthen Europe’s position at the forefront of space exploration. With over 50 beneficiaries providing access to more than 40 facilities on 5 continents, as well as four virtual access services linking over 100 data services and catalogues, the project was one of the most complex and ambitious ever supported by the EC.
Professional evaluation of the project reveals that significant impact has emerged from the project in scientific, technological, training and education, economic, social and societal domains. The infographic below summarises the main project results, and more details on the outputs and longer-term impacts can be found in articles in this issue, as well as a special compilation issue of the Europlanet Magazine published in September 2024.
Europlanet 2024 RI was the latest in a series of EC-funded projects to support the planetary research community over almost twenty years. Throughout Europlanet 2024 RI, sustainability planning has been ongoing to ensure that the Europlanet portfolio of activities will continue into a third decade.
In 2023, a not-for-profit association (Europlanet AISBL) was established to provide a legal structure for operations. At EPSC 2024, a new membership programme for organisations will be launched, which will supplement the existing individual membership programmes that have been running since 2018. This new funding model will enable Europlanet to carry on its core activities. Europlanet’s President, Ann Carine Vandaele, and the Europlanet 2024 RI Coordinator, Nigel Mason, share their vision in this issue’s ‘Last Word’ column, Europlanet: Beyond 2024 and more details can be found online.
Berlin Welcomes EPSC2024
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The Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) will be returning to Berlin for a third time from 8-13 September 2024. Established in 2006, EPSC has grown into the largest annual meeting in Europe for planetary science and has been hosted in nine different countries. The 2024 edition, hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin, expects around 1200 participants.
EPSC has a distinctively interactive style, with an extensive mix of talks, workshops and posters, designed to provide a stimulating environment for the community to meet. The congress also aims to adapt to changing times. For the first time, EPSC2024 scientific sessions will be fully hybrid. Innovations in the programme include focused poster sessions within the parallel programme, Q&A panels embedded within oral blocks, informal networking hours and the first Europlanet Space Innovation Night (E-SPIN).
Outreach programmes include a public event at the Zeiss Planetarium, and EPSC Goes Live for Schools, which supports conference attendants to engage with schools in the Berlin area and online. The conference is sponsored by Freie Universität Berlin, the Natural History Museum of Berlin and the Space: Science & Technology journal. Bursaries for 128 early careers, researchers from under-represented states amateurs and teachers have been supported through Europlanet and the International Commission on Planetary Atmospheres and their Evolution (ICPAE).
Early Career Events at EPSC2024
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The Europlanet Early Career Network (EPEC) is offering several activities for early careers at EPSC2024. Join the EPEC social event, a career development panel discussion, the ‘Science Flash’ competition and the EPEC general assembly. Stop at the EPEC booth in the exhibition to find more out how you can get involved in Europlanet early career activities and EPEC.
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#InspiredByOtherWorlds Arts Contest 2024
EPSC2024 is inviting schools and space enthusiasts of all ages to get creative and share their artworks and performances inspired by the theme of ‘Returning to Earth’. Show us how you have been inspired to create drawings, storytelling, pictures, videos, stop-motion animations, models, craft works or art installations at home.
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EPSC-DPS 2025
The 2023 Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) took place together with the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) in San Antonio, Texas, from 1-6 October 2023, in hybrid format. A quarter of the 918 DPS-EPSC 2023 participants were from Europe. The programme was co-organised jointly by DPS and EPSC committee members and included keynote lectures, an Agency Town Hall, and many other events involving both US and European speakers.
The joint meeting offered opportunities to try out some new approaches for EPSC. Oral sessions, which comprised in-person and live online contributions, were organised with back-to-back blocks of talks interspersed by panel discussions with the speakers. The poster hall included large format displays by in-person presenters, as well as smaller-scale printouts of virtual posters, which were also uploaded to the Gathertown platform. The poster hall included a stage for lightning talks by poster presenters, as well as a Gathertown terminal for interactions with virtual participants. Lessons learned through the DPS-EPSC experience with a hybrid meeting will feed into the organisation of future events, starting with EPSC 2024 in Berlin, Germany, and the EPSC-DPS 2025 Joint Meeting in Helsinki, Finland.
Juice Science Webinar Series
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Europlanet is organising a series of webinars with a special focus on the ESA Juice mission. The next event will be on 27 September. Look out for details of speakers and the link to register through the Europlanet newsletter. You can find all the Juice webinars to date, plus recordings of Europlanet webinars on a range of other topics on Youtube.
Incoming Vice Chair of EPSC
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Noah Jäggi is the Incoming Vice Chair of the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) Executive Committee.
Noah is a space physicist with a background in geochemistry that connects laboratory experiments to numerical simulations. In 2019, he joined the Europlanet Early Career (EPEC) network and has been an active member since, co-organising early career focused events at EPSC and chairing the EPEC@EPSC working group from 2020 to 2022. In mid-2023, he completed his PhD and moved to the USA for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship. He took on the role of EPEC Treasurer, and recently returned to EPEC@ EPSC to organise a 2024 edition of the Science Flash contest in Berlin, through which early careers are invited to present a scientific topic in a funny and engaging way.
EPEC Annual Week 2024
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This year, EPEC Annual Week was hosted at the Università degli Studi di Padova. Across four days, 23 in-person participants and 20 online attendees networked and took part in workshops, talks and social activities. EPEC Annual Week is always a great opportunity for early careers to make new connections, create collaborations and get to know the wider Europlanet community. This year’s highlights included sessions on planetary science in Italy and a group walking tour of Padova’s historic city centre. This is an exciting time for EPEC. The network is always looking for creative input and active engagement – so get involved!
Launch of ESFRI Landscape Analysis 2024
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The European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) Landscape Analysis 2024 was launched at a conference on Research Infrastructures (RI) in Brussels on 4-5 June. The Landscape Analysis 2024 will provide the framework for the next ESFRI Roadmap, which will set out strategic guidance for research infrastructures for the next 10-20 years. For the first time, Europlanet is namechecked in the document. The Landscape analysis also references the Astronomy & Space Network of Networks (NeoNs), which was proposed in 2023, during a day of sessions at the Europlanet Research Infrastructure Meeting (ERIM) 2023 in Bratislava.
Importantly, due to feedback coordinated through NeoNs, the title of the subdomain in the Landscape Analysis on astronomy and astroparticle physics now also includes space science. This change means that planetary science, astrobiology, astrochemistry are now more clearly included, which will be important in future European funding calls. These outcomes demonstrate the potential value of collaboration through Astronomy & Space NeoNs for the planetary community. Since 2021, Europlanet has also been involved in the organisation of workshops to provide a forum for small and medium-sized distributed RIs (DRIs).
A fourth workshop is planned in Budapest on 18 September 2024, as part of the Hungarian Presidency of the European Council. The creation of a formal DRI network is also proposed.
SPIDER Spies Atmospheric Escape at Venus
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When the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flew past Venus on 10 August 2021, it revealed surprising insights into how gases are stripped away from the upper layers of the planet’s atmosphere. Detections in a previously unexplored region of Venus’s magnetic environment showed that carbon and oxygen ions were accelerated to speeds where they could escape the planet’s gravitational pull.
These observations are the first time that positively charged carbon ions have been observed escaping from Venus’s atmosphere. The results were published in the journal Nature Astronomy on 12 April 2024 in a study led by Lina Hadid, CNRS researcher at the Plasma Physics Laboratory (LPP) in France.
Unlike Earth, Venus does not generate an intrinsic magnetic field in its core. Nonetheless, a weak, comet-shaped ‘induced magnetosphere’ is created around the planet by the interaction of the solar wind with electrically charged particles in Venus’s upper atmosphere. Draped around the magnetosphere is a region called the ‘magnetosheath’ where the solar wind is slowed and heated.
Over a 90-minute period of observations inside Venus’s magnetosheath, BepiColombo’s instruments measured the number and mass of charged particles it encountered. Europlanet’s SPIDER space weather modelling tools enabled the researchers to track how the particles propagated through the region.
Community News
Ariel Data Challenge 2024
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The Ariel Data Challenge 2024, in collaboration with the NeurIPS 2024 conference, is calling all data scientists, astronomers, and AI enthusiasts to help tackle one of astronomy’s most complex data analysis problems—extracting faint exoplanetary signals from noisy space telescope observations. With a substantial prize pool of $50,000 USD at stake, the competition aims to attract top talent and innovative solutions.
Workshop at ATOMKI
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The HUN-REN Nuclear Research Institute (ATOMKI) hosted a two-day workshop on Radiation-Driven Chemistry in Astrophysics and Planetary Science on 24-25 April 2024. Around 45 international participants attended and discussed developments in astrochemistry and presented the latest results of their research. The first day finished with a round-table discussion on some of the challenges and opportunities for the astrochemistry community
Several presentations over the two days featured work carried out through the Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) Transnational Access (TA) programme in the ATOMKI laboratories.
Participants were given tours of both ATOMKI facilities offered for TA through Europlanet, the Atomki Ice Chamber for Astrophysics/ Astrochemistry (ICA) and the Atomki ECRIS Laboratory: Atomki- Queen’s University Ice Laboratory for Astrochemistry (AQUILA).
Tatra Workshop
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The Europlanet Central Europe Hub’s Tatra workshop, held on 19-20 June 2024 at the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Tatranská Lomnica, Slovakia, brought together experts and early careers in planetary and space science from across Europe for two days of presentations and discussions.
The workshop held a round-table on the first day to introduce participants to, and engage them in, the wider Central European planetary science community. This was followed by scientific presentations on the second day, covering topics from planetary research at Konkoly Observatory to the role of tardigrades in space protection.
56th Conference On Variable Star Research
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The 56th Conference and Pro-Am Meeting on Variable Star Research is taking place from 13-15 September in hybrid format at the Castle Hill in Litomyšl, Czechia, and online. The Europlanet Central Europe Hub is providing some support for travel costs for international participants. Contributions from the conference will be published in the Open European Journal on Variable Stars and recordings of talks will be available on YouTube.
Europlanet Early Career Prize for Best Iberian Thesis
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The Europlanet Spain-Portugal Hub is proud to announce the winners of the first early career prizes in Spain and Portugal for theses in planetary sciences and exploration:
Jennifer Huidobro (University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has been awarded the Abraham Zacut prize for her PhD thesis on exploring martian and lunar geochemistry through the study of meteorites, analogues, laboratory simulation and mission data analysis.
Vasco Cardoso (University of Coimbra and University of Alicante) has been awarded the Pedro Nunes Prize for his Master’s thesis on the collisional evolution of Jupiter Trojans.
Incoming Chair of Germany Hub
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Carlos Brandt is the incoming chair of the Europlanet Germany Hub. Carlos has a degree in physics from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and a Master’s in numerical simulations from the National Laboratory of Scientific Computing, both in Brazil . This led to a career in computational astrophysics in Italy, where he did his PhD at the Sapienza University of Rome and the Italian Space Agency’s Data Center.
In Germany, Carlos worked on numerous European projects on managing geoplanetary data in Angelo Pio Rossi’s group at Constructor (Jacobs) University in Bremen, Germany. Carlos is a big admirer of the open-source software movement and all efforts to improve accessibility to knowledge. He follows Jörn Helbert as Chair of the Germany Hub.
Inspiring Women
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‘The Sky is for Everyone’, published by Princeton University Press, is an anthology of stories by women around the world working in astronomy. The volume is edited by Virginia Trimble and David Weintraub, whose introductory chapter also provides a timeline of the achievements of trailblazing women astronomers over the past 350 years. The collection features 37 autobiographies, of women who gained their PhDs between 1963 and 2010, including Gražina Tautvaišienė, Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy at Vilnius University, Lithuania, and Vice-Chair of the Europlanet Northern Hub. Gražina is also featured in the 2024 Calendar of Inspiring Physicists published by the European Physical Society. She was elected Vice President of the International Astronomical Union in August 2024.
Ireland-UK Hub Meeting
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Members of the new Ireland-UK Hub Committee met in person at the British Planetary Science Congress (BPSC). The mission statement for the Hub, the committee composition and the recruitment of positions to be filled were discussed. The Hub is particularly searching for more Irish representatives to join the committee.
BPSC 2024 took place at Space Park Leicester (SPL) and the adjacent National Space Centre between 18-21 June. The event started with a 1-day workshop for early careers, during which experienced SPL engineers and project managers presented examples of how space instruments and missions are developed.
The main 3-day conference consisted of oral and poster sessions, reflecting the range of topical planetary and space science activities in the UK. Europlanet sponsored the event through the Ireland-UK Hub. The Europlanet Management Team from the University of Kent attended with a stand and participated in the community consultation day.
Get to know some of the members of the Ireland-UK Hub Committee through their profiles on the Ireland-UK Hub webpages.
PLANETOEXOBIO2024
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The first French national conference on Planetary Science and Astrobiology (PLANETOEXOBIO2024) was held in Nantes from 1-5 July 2024 with over 150 participants from all over the country. In total 69 oral presentations were made with a notable upsurge in presentations on Titan and Venus, showcasing the community’s preparation for the upcoming missions to those bodies. Updates were given by the four contributing institutions: the French Society of Astrobiology, the National Planetary Science Programme, the Priority Research Equipment Programme ‘ORIGINS’, and the Europlanet France Hub. There were two evening poster sessions with 43 presenters, which sparked animated exchanges between established scientists, students from Master’s to PhD, postdocs and non-academic partners.
During the event, two workshops were held for early career researchers on alternative career paths and were attended by over 35 people. There were lively discussions with the six panellists on their diverse careers and the pros and cons of these paths. The conference grabbed media attention and was featured on the local and regional TV news and in local newspapers.
