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A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Satellite Missions for Earth and Planetary Exploration".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2023 | Viewed by 7543

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Dr. Roberto Orosei

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Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Via Piero Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
Interests: planetary science; Mars; Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR); Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR); electromagnetic propagation simulation; signal processing

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Radars have been used in the study of Solar System bodies since the first echoes from the Moon were recorded by ground-based antennas in 1946. Ground-based radars have imaged the surface of the Moon, Venus, and Mars and have been used to precisely measure the motion and produce images of asteroids. Space-borne radar experiments have probed the subsurface of the Moon and Mars, revealed the interior structure of a comet nucleus and measured the depth of methane seas on Titan. Quantitative analysis of radar data has allowed the identification of ice deposits in permanently shadowed craters of the Moon and the detection of liquid water on Mars, as well as the measurement of the structure and thickness of the lunar regolith. Planetary radars have spurred the development of novel technological solutions to perform in environments unlike the Earth and sired new data processing and analysis methods to estimate physical parameters that are not measured by Earth-orbiting radars. This issue aims at documenting recent developments in a field that has characteristics that set it apart from radars used in Earth observations, from the design to the building, operations, data processing, and analysis of both Earth-based and space-borne planetary radars.

Dr. Roberto Orosei
Guest Editor

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Keywords

planetary radar
radar sounder
solar system
planets
asteroids
comets
moon

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Open AccessArticle

Unveiling the Subsurface of Late Amazonian Lava Flows at Echus Chasma, on Mars

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(5), 1357; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15051357 - 28 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1573

Abstract

The Echus-Kasei region on Mars has been exposed to different episodic volcanic, fluvial, and glacial events in Amazonian time. The goal of the present work is to demonstrate the usefulness of radar instruments to find preserved late Amazonian subsurface structures that may have been encapsulated underneath recent lava flows on Mars. We have analysed 27 radar observations of the SHAllow RADar (SHARAD) instrument on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), over the region of Echus Chasma. We discovered the presence of subsurface reflectors in five consecutive SHARAD radargrams at a depth from 35 to 79 m beneath the structure of a lava fan that formed about 59 ± 4 Ma ago. Some vents are preserved above the surface of this lava flow, which stands at a height of 80 m above the surrounding surface. A few kilometres to the north, we find other subsurface reflectors at a depth of about 30 m and a long pit chain formed by the collapse of a lava tube. These kinds of subsurface late Amazonian structures are of interest for astrobiology because they date from the last period when the planet still experienced intense volcanic activity over regions that were previously extensively covered by water. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Radar for Planetary Exploration)

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Open AccessArticle

Resolving Ambiguities in SHARAD Data Analysis Using High-Resolution Digital Terrain Models

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(3), 764; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15030764 - 28 Jan 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 988

Abstract

The SHAllow RADar (SHARAD) onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is a 20 MHz Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that probes the first hundreds of meters of the Martian subsurface. In order to interpret the detection of subsurface interfaces with ground penetrating radars, simulations using Digital Terrain Models (DTM) are necessary. This methodology paper focuses on the analysis of the first tens of meters of the Martian subsurface with SHARAD, comparing the use of different high-resolution DTMs for radar simulation, namely, from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the Mars Express and from the Context Camera (CTX) onboard MRO. The region of Terra Cimmeria was chosen as a demonstration area. It is a highly cratered southern midlatitude region, where, as will be discussed, the higher resolution of the aforementioned terrain models is mandatory to describe the surface at an acceptable level of detail for shallow subsurface radar interpretation. With a DTM corrected by photoclinometry using CTX imagery, we show that a reflector that was visible on SHARAD data but not on the simulation made with an HRSC DTM is, in fact, a surface echo that was not reproduced by the HRSC surface model. We also show that, unlike laser altimetry DTMs, optical DTMs are prone to artifacts that can make radar analysis more complicated for some scenarios. Reciprocally, we show that the comparison between radar and its corresponding simulated data is a way of assessing a DTM’s quality, which is especially useful in missions where ground control points are lacking, unlike Martian observations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Radar for Planetary Exploration)

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Open AccessArticle

An Innovative Synthetic Aperture Radar Design Method for Lunar Water Ice Exploration

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Remote Sens. 2022, 14(9), 2148; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14092148 - 30 Apr 2022

Viewed by 1290

Abstract

Owing to the Moon’s rough surface, there is a growing controversy over the conclusion that water ice exists in the lunar permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) with a high circular polarization ratio (CPR). To further detect water ice on the Moon, an innovative design method for spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system is proposed, to obtain radar data that can be used to distinguish water ice from lunar regolith with a small difference in the dielectric constants. According to Campbell’s dielectric constant model and the requirement that SAR radiometric resolution is smaller than the contrast of targets in images, a newly defined SAR system function involved in the method is presented to evaluate the influence of some system parameters on the water ice detection capability of SAR. In addition, several simulation experiments are performed, and the results demonstrate that the presented SAR design method may be helpful for lunar water ice exploration. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Radar for Planetary Exploration)

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Open AccessTechnical Note

Data Pre-Processing and Signal Analysis of Tianwen-1 Rover Penetrating Radar

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Remote Sens. 2023, 15(4), 966; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs15040966 - 09 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1091

Abstract

The Rover-mounted Subsurface Penetrating Radar (RoSPR) is one of the scientific payloads onboard China’s first independent Mars exploration mission, Tianwen-1. The radar aims to characterize the thickness of the upper Martian soil and investigate the subsurface stratigraphy by collecting and processing the data. This article is mainly divided into two parts, the introduction of data pre-processing and analysis of pre-processed radar signals, aiming at helping scientists make more effective use of radar data. The first part describes the operating principle of the RoSPR and the procedure of radar data pre-processing at all levels. Data pre-processing is mainly designed to transfer the raw data format to a common PDS (Planetary Data System) and eliminate the influence of the instrument. In the signal analysis part, the performances of both self-check signals and echo signals of low- and high-frequency channels are analyzed, which indicate a stable radar system and are useful for background removal. Phase and time calibration is of great importance for improving data quality and making the radar data more accurate. Moreover, further processing is required to obtain clear radar images, such as filtering, background removal and gain setting. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Radar for Planetary Exploration)

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Open AccessTechnical Note

Electromagnetic Signal Attenuation Characteristics in the Lunar Regolith Observed by the Lunar Regolith Penetrating Radar (LRPR) Onboard the Chang’E-5 Lander

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Remote Sens. 2022, 14(20), 5189; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14205189 - 17 Oct 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1523

Abstract

The Chinese Chang’E-5 probe landed in the Mons Rümker of Oceanus Procellarum on the near side of the Moon. The lunar regolith penetrating radar (LRPR) carried by the Chang’E-5 probe allows for the determination of in situ lunar regolith dielectric properties, which are probably related to the age and chemical composition of the regolith. In this paper, we analyze the Chang’E-5 LRPR data with the frequency shift method to estimate the loss tangent of the lunar regolith within a depth of ∼2.8 m. The loss tangent of the Chang’E-5 landing site is constrained to be 0.0148 ± 0.0016, which is substantially higher than that of the typical lunar regolith. The high loss tangent is found to be characteristic of the young basalt age (∼2.0 Ga) and high TiO

_{2}

+FeO content (28.21 ± 1.57%) of the Chang’E-5 landing site. Integrated analysis of results from Chang’E-3, Chang’E-4, and Chang’E-5 show that the younger is the geologic age of the mare unit, the greater is the loss tangent of the lunar regolith, and the weaker is the radar electromagnetic signal penetrating ability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Radar for Planetary Exploration)

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