Seminar by Edoardo Del Vecchio (UniRome) – “Characterizing Gravity Anomalies on Planetary Bodies via Radio Science Data: Applications to Mercury and Mars”

Radio science plays a crucial role in geophysical investigations of planetary bodies, using precise spacecraft tracking to estimate gravity fields and constrain key planetary properties and processes. After a brief overview of the measurements and methodologies commonly used in radio science, this seminar presents two case studies in which radio-tracking data are exploited to characterize gravity anomalies on two different planetary bodies. Measurements acquired by the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft during its first Mercury flybys are used to locally refine the planet’s gravity field, offering new possibilities to investigate the formation and evolution of the Beethoven impact basin, one of the largest and most peculiar structures on Mercury. A renewed analysis framework applied to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) radio-tracking data then shows that these observations can effectively capture time-varying gravity signals associated with Mars’ seasonal CO₂ mass redistribution linked to the cyclic deposition and sublimation of the Martian polar ice caps.