The ‘Moon Mapping’ Project to Promote Cooperation Between Students of Italy and China

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The research project 'Moon Mapping' has been established in 2014 between the Italian and Chinese Governments to promote cooperation and exchange between undergraduate students from both countries. The operational phase of the project started in early 2015, and will end in 2017, for a total length of three years. The main aim is to train new scholars to be able to work on different kinds of remotely-sensed data collected over the Moon surface by the Chinese space missions Chang'E-1/2. The project coordination has been assigned to the Italian Space Agency for the Italian side and to the Center of Space Exploration, China Ministry of Education, for the Chinese side. Several Chinese universities and Italian national research institutes and universities have been officially involved in this project. Six main research topics have been identified: (1) map of the solar wind ion; (2) geomorphological map of the Moon; (3) data preprocessing of Chang'E-1 mission; (4) map of element distribution; (5) establishment of 3D digital visualization system; and (6) compilation and publication of a tutorial on joint lunar mapping.

Recognition of landslides in lunar impact craters

“…On the other side, other analyses based on complementary data sources would help make the recognition process more robust. For instance, the use of multispectral data from Chinese Chang'E-1 mission has offered some initial interesting results for the detection of spectral anomalies along the slopes of craters, which can be linked to lithological and morphological different features (Scaioni et al, 2016).…”

On the Use of Tri-Stereo Pleiades Images for the Morphometric Measurement of Dolines in the Basaltic Plateau of Azrou (Middle Atlas, Morocco)

“…The results of our work demonstrate that tri-stereo satellite images are suitable for the morphometric assessment of shadow-prone negative and positive landforms, and might also be used for the analysis of skylights and collapses on lava flows on the Moon and on Mars, where vegetation or human-built structures are completely lacking, as preparatory surveys for future robotic and human explorations of extraterrestrial caves [31][32][33].…”