From the Moon to Mars, then Venus and the Galilean moons, and one day perhaps, Saturn’s icy moons. Observing the surfaces of all these solid worlds provides a wealth of information about their composition and the history that shaped them, but surface also hides all their underlying secrets. The structures buried beneath the surface and the composition of the subsurface of asteroids, comets, planets and their satellites provide evidence of past geological processes and are often better preserved than the surface, which has been eroded by wind, water or meteorites. While radar sounders and ground-penetrating radar are gradually becoming essential tools in space exploration missions, interpreting their data often remains difficult or ambiguous and requires preliminary performance testing of the instruments in environments similar to those found on Earth. After giving a few examples of the results obtained by sounding radars in planetology, I will illustrate the challenges of field campaigns and the preparation of the interpretation of data from WISDOM, the radar of the ExoMars 2028 mission, based on data acquired in Svalbard (Spitsbergen) on various icy morphologies.
Révéler les structures enfouies des mondes solides du système solaire sans creuser
Lundi 19 janvier 2026
de
16:00 à
17:00
Salle de conférence, bâtiment 17 - Zoom
