OVERVIEW

The workshop aims to advance our understanding of impact processes across the Solar System, with a particular focus on airless bodies such as the Moon, Mercury, Martian moons, and icy moons. These objects, lacking atmospheres, are directly exposed to micrometeoroid fluxes, energetic particles, and magnetospheric interactions. As a result, impacts play a fundamental role in shaping their surfaces, driving regolith evolution, and influencing exosphere variability.

Our discussions will address how impacts operate across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Large-scale impacts deliver substantial energy and govern long-term geological evolution, while small-scale impacts occur more frequently and drive short-term variability through regolith overturn, surface renewal, volatile release, and transient exosphere production. By integrating modelling, laboratory experiments, mission data analysis, and theoretical frameworks, the workshop seeks to build a comprehensive picture of these processes.

The programme will feature lightning introductions, keynote presentations, contributed talks, Q&A sessions, and round-table discussions, fostering cross-disciplinary exchange between geologists, experimentalists, modellers, and observers. A dedicated session will focus on preparing a joint ISSI International Team proposal, particularly addressing coordinated observations and modelling of impact-generated exospheres. These efforts will support the interpretation of data from recent, ongoing, and upcoming missions, including MMX, BepiColombo, JUICE, and Europa Clipper.

Learn more about the programme here for details on the schedule and sessions.

IMPORTANT DATES

CHAIRS

Rozenn ROBIDEL (European Space Agency, ESAC, Spain, rozenn.robidel@esa.int)
Cem Berk SENEL (Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Royal Observatory of Belgium, Belgium, cem.berk@observatory.be)
Sébastien VERKERCKE (Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, CNES, France, sebastien.verkercke@lpp.polytechnique.fr)