Elena Donini selected visiting scientist by ESA ARCHIVAL RESEARCH VISITOR PROGRAMME

02/02/2024 The FBK researcher has been selected by an independent committee and will be spending a period at ESA in spring-summer 2024. She will develop an advanced method to efficiently select significant radargrams in large archives. The research will be applied to RIME/JUICE and SRS/EnVision subsurface radar space missions in which FBK is involved

Elena Donini, a researcher at the Remote Sensing for Digital Earth unit at FBK Digital Society Center, has been selected to participate in the Archival Research Visitor Program at the European Space Agency (ESA). An independent committee successfully evaluated her proposal to conduct scientific research utilizing data from the ESA Space Science Archives. As a result, she will be visiting the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, Netherlands, for three months in late 2024 spring.

During her stay, Elena will work on the project Fast CARS (Fast Content-based Radar soundEr Data Retrieval), which focuses on enhancing subsurface geologic information extraction from radar sounder data. Over recent decades, radar sounders mounted on satellites and aircraft have gathered substantial data, with upcoming planetary missions expected to add significantly to these archives. Content-based image retrieval techniques are promising for searching within large radar sounder data archives, although challenges exist due to the unique characteristics of radar sounder data.

Elena will develop an advanced method for efficiently retrieving radar sounder imagery from extensive archives.