Procedures for using Geographic Information System for the handling and processing of scientific data from the planetary surfaces

The availability of large volume of data from instruments on-board scientific planetary missions justify the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) procedures for the study of terrestrial planets and their satellites. As mission data volumes increase the use of GIS techniques oer the planetary scientist a way for fast retrieval, storage and analysis of heterogeneous data and allows comparative analysis between dierent dataset that otherwise would be dicult to perform. Although GIS systems have been already used for planetary research, none provides a native generic support for studying surfaces of terrestrial planets and satellites. The work presented here describes the development of a pool of procedures in the form of computer codes and supporting files produced to provide a generic support to handle, analyze and visualize planetary remote sensed data in a selected GIS system allowing to perform the comparative analysis of dierent geological and geophysical planetary data. The application of procedures developed allowed to aggregate maps from dierent mission to Mars in order to investigate the geologic context of an area of Mars and to correlate these information with the first subsurface signals of the Mars Advanced Radar Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounder (MARSIS).