Carbonaceous asteroids are considered to best preserve the early Solar System's mineralogical and molecular phases, but they have undergone transformation through space weathering and aqueous alteration. Sample-return missions like NASA’s OSIRIS-REx and JAXA’s Hayabusa2 have provided uncontaminated materials from asteroids Bennu and Ryugu, respectively, allowing for direct analysis. My study...
Gaia is a space mission from the European Space Agency (ESA) that was launched in 2013. Apart from the survey of stars, it is also highly valuable to study solar system objects (SSO) with high precision. Its latest data release in October 2023 includes 66 months of data on about 160,000 SSOs. Gaia’s precise measurements can reveal astrometric signals of binary asteroids, for example the...
Despite the challenge of directly imaging exoplanets, we are seeing, thanks to instruments like JWST/NirSpec, ESO/CRIRES+ and ESO/HiRISE, the advent of high-spectral resolution observations tragetting wide-orbit gas giants; these Rosetta stones of planetary processes render the field mature to advance studies aimed at unveiling the atmospheric composition, orbital characteristics, chemistry,...
A comprehensive analysis of Mercury's Low-Latitude Boundary Layer (LLBL) has been studied using MESSENGER observations from 11 March 2011 to 30 April 2015. LLBL events were classified into three distinct categories based on energy dispersion trends: increasing, decreasing, and unclear cases. The results indicate significant differences in plasma transport mechanisms, energy evolution, and...
Methane is the second most abundant component of Titan's atmosphere (~5% at the surface). The temperature and pressure enables liquid methane at the surface, forming lakes. In the atmosphere, methane can condense and form clouds, and rain. Titan clouds are monitored from Earth telescopes, but detailed images are scarce and come from the Cassini-Huygens mission that took place between 2004 and...
