Europlanet 2024 RI

The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure is a Research Infrastructure (RI) supported for four years by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149

Project Summary

The Europlanet 2024 Research Infrastructure (RI) will provide the pan-EU infrastructure needed to address the major scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science and strengthen Europe’s position at the forefront of space exploration.

Europlanet 2024 RI builds on the foundations of a series of highly successful EU-funded projects that have created the leading Virtual Observatory for planetary data and the largest, most diverse collection in the world today of field and laboratory facilities capable of simulating and analyzing planetary environments. Europlanet 2024 RI will provide Transnational Access (TA) to an enhanced set of world-leading field and laboratory facilities, Virtual Access (VA) to state-of-the-art data services and tools linked to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and Networking Activities (NA) to widen the user base and draw in new partners from Under Represented States (URS), non-EU countries, industry and interdisciplinary fields, and to train the next generation of RI leaders and users. 

With 53 beneficiaries, from both industry and academic sectors, providing access to 29 TA facilities on 5 continents and 4 VA services linking over 100 data services and catalogues, Europlanet 2024 RI represents a step-change in ambition for planetary science worldwide. Innovations include the establishment of a ground based observation network to support space based missions, the launch of an interactive mapping service to provide virtual exploration of planetary surfaces, and the development of machine learning tools for data mining to fully exploit and analyze planetary data sets. Europlanet 2024 RI will establish global collaborations and an international userbase for the RI through inclusion of partners in Africa, Asia and South America. Ultimately, Europlanet 2024 RI will support the transition of this unique infrastructure to a sustainable future within the structure of the Europlanet Society.

Project consortium

The Europlanet 2024 RI consortium is led by the University of Kent, UK, and has 53 beneficiary institutions from 21 countries in Europe and around the world, with a further 44 affiliated partners. The project draws on the resources of the Europlanet Society to disseminate activities and outcomes and develop a more diverse community of users.

ESF tasks within the Europlanet 2024 RI are coordinated by Dr. Jonas L’Haridon, Ms. Mariette Vandermersch and Mr. Nicolas Walter.
 

Role of ESF

Within the management of Europlanet 2024 RI, ESF is implementing competitive calls for transnational access to research facilities and planetary analogue field sites as well as exploring opportunities for collaboration opportunities with other international planetary infrastructure providers (notably with Korea and China). 

In particular, ESF is in charge of collecting research applications from the transnational access calls and implementing the independent scientific assessment informing the selection process. To provide robust evaluations of proposals, ESF relies on its extensive experience and wide network of experts.  
 

Timeline & Funding

The project is funded through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme (10M€) and runs for four years from February 2020 until January 2024.

Project Portal

Website      http://europlanet-2024-ri.eu
Twitter        @europlanetmedia   
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This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149