Project: Europlanet 2024 RI

At the beginning of February 2020, the EU project Europlanet 2024 - Research Infrastructure started. Its aim is to effectively link and foster European research in the area of planetary physics. For the last one and a half decades, Europlanet has been providing a platform for the exchange of ideas as well as scientists. Project partners are supported in using scientific tools, research facilities and databases in a common and shared way. The Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW) in Graz is one of the 51 project partners from 21 European and international countries.

Within the work package Machine Learning Solutions for Data Analysis and Exploitation for Planetary Sciences, led by Ute Amerstorfer, the Know-Center in Graz, the University of Passau, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the French ACRI-ST, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAP-CAS), the Northern Irish Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP) and the Lomonosov Moscow State University will take up the new challenges of data analysis in the planetary sciences.

Another work package, led by Manuel Scherf, coordinates the Europlanet Telescope Network and integrates amateur astronomers into planetary sciences. In addition to IWF, it also involves the British University of Edinborough, the Spanish University of the Basque Country, the Lithuanian University of Vilnius, the Polish Adam Mickiewicz University and the French Observatoire de Paris.

Furthermore, IWF participates in the Virtual Observatory VESPA and the integration of Early Career Scientists and researchers from under-represented EU-member states.