Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2019

Presentation information

[E] Oral

P (Space and Planetary Sciences ) » P-PS Planetary Sciences

[P-PS03] Solar System Small Bodies: A New Frontier Arising Hayabusa 2, OSIRIS-REx and Other Projects

Wed. May 29, 2019 9:00 AM - 10:30 AM A01 (TOKYO BAY MAKUHARI HALL)

convener:Masateru Ishiguro(Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University), Taishi Nakamoto(Tokyo Institute of Technology), Masanao Abe(Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Olivier S Barnouin(Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory), Chairperson:Taishi Nakamoto(Tokyo Institute of Technology)

9:45 AM - 10:00 AM

[PPS03-22] Visualization and Analysis of Solar System Small Bodies with NASA’s Solar System Treks Project

*Brian Hamilton Day1, Emily Law2 (1.NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, 2.NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)

Keywords:Ceres, Vesta

In its investigations of Vesta and Ceres, NASA’s Dawn mission has returned spectacular data detailing the surfaces of these two prominent small bodies in our Solar System’s asteroid belt. In order to greatly facilitate dissemination, visualization, and analysis of this data, and public understanding of the mission, the Dawn mission has partnered with NASA’s Solar System Treks Project (SSTP). SSTP has recently released an update to the Vesta Trek online portal (https://trek.nasa.gov/vesta/) and has released a new Ceres Trek portal (https://trek.nasa.gov/ceres/).

This presentation will showcase the use of the Ceres Trek and Vesta Trek portals and demonstrate how they can be used to visualize and analyze particularly interesting landforms such as the pitted terrain on Vesta and relic cryovolcanoes on Ceres. We will also demonstrate the new VR capability that has been added to the portals, allowing users to generate their own virtual reality flyovers for any user-defined paths along the bodies’ surfaces. In addition to highlighting the portals for Ceres and Vesta, the presentation will preview additional portals being planned/developed for other small bodies. NASA and JAXA have requested the development of a portal for the asteroid Ryugu to facilitate dissemination, visualization, and analysis of data from Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission, and a portal for Mars’ moon Phobos in support of mission planning for Japan’s MMX mission. We are also planning a portal for the asteroid Bennu with data from the OSIRIS-Rex mission.

All of these products are efforts in the NASA Solar System Treks Project (SSTP), available at https://trek.nasa.gov. NASA's Solar System Trek online portals provide web-based suites of interactive data visualization and analysis tools to enable mission planners, planetary scientists, students, and the general public to access mapped data products from past and current missions for a growing number of planetary bodies including the Moon, Mars, Vesta, etc. These portals are being used for site selection and analysis by NASA and a number of its international partners, supporting upcoming missions. In addition to demonstrating the capabilities of selected portals in this presentation, we will solicit input from the community for ideas for future enhancements to the portals.