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Advances in Exploring the Moon, Mars, and Asteroids Based on In Situ and Remote Sensing Measurements (Second Edition)

A Special Issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292) belonging to the section "Satellite Missions for Earth and Planetary Exploration".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 1600

Editors

Dr. Simone Pirrotta

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Italian Space Agency, Via del Politecnico snc, 00133 Rome, Italy
Interests: exploration architectures; space project management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Francesca Esposito

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte, Salita Moiariello 16, 80131 Naples, Italy
Interests: exploration; Moon, Mars; asteroids; comets; dust
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alice Lucchetti

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
Interests: asteroid geomorphology; planetary defense; spectrophotometry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Maurizio Pajola

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
Interests: Mars robotic and human landing sites; phobos and asteroids surface morphological analyses
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Due to the overwhelming support for and interest in the previous Special Issue, we are introducing a second edition of “Advances in Exploring the Moon, Mars, and Asteroids Based on In-Situ and Remote Sensing Measurements” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/932BQSQYU3). We would like to thank all the authors and co-authors who contributed to the success of the first edition.

The most intriguing questions in space science are related to the origins and evolution of the Solar System and the possible emergence of life outside Earth. Moreover, the Moon, Mars, and asteroids have the unique additional relevance of being potential destinations for exploration by astronauts, with the aim of expanding human presence in space beyond our planet while also accomplishing scientific investigations. Hence, the characterization of these environments can also be oriented to assess habitability in preparation for future crewed missions. Geological features, the study of the environment (e.g., atmosphere, exosphere, dust, plasma, radiation, etc.) and related hazards for exploration, and the occurrence of resources or threads are clear examples of areas of interest which interconnect science and robotic/human exploration.

With this Special Issue, we intend to capture the recent achievements and future trends in robotic exploration enabled by remote sensing and other in situ measurements techniques. Data collected by planetary orbiters, landers, and rovers have already contributed to our understanding of other celestial bodies. These necessary instruments are expected receive performance improves while also reducing in size, mass, and resource needs in order to comply with trends such as smallsats for exploration.

Contributions to this Special Issue will cover traditional scientific topics and novel areas such as innovative strategies for interplanetary transfer and observation, the characterization of planetary environments, the identification of space resources/reserves, the assessment of potential habitability, and new payloads for small satellites.

Dr. Simone Pirrotta
Dr. Francesca Esposito
Dr. Alice Lucchetti
Dr. Maurizio Pajola
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • geological features
  • study of the environment
  • resources
  • robotic and human exploration
  • innovative strategies
  • remote sensing dataset analyses
  • new instrumentation concepts
  • smallsat concepts

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

29 pages, 50937 KB  
Article
MAFT: A Lightweight Network for Martian Rock Segmentation Based on an Adaptive Frequency Transformer
by Chu Li, Yutong Jia, Gang Wan, Qifang Ma, Jia Liu, Yang Wang, Biao Wang, Jia Liu and Zhanji Wei
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(11), 1794; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18111794 - 1 Jun 2026
Viewed by 487
Abstract
The segmentation of rocks on the Martian surface is crucial for navigation and obstacle avoidance by Mars rovers. However, frequent dust storms degrade rock surface textures, and the wide range of rock scales—from sub-meter to ten-meter—further complicates segmentation, especially under the strict computational [...] Read more.
The segmentation of rocks on the Martian surface is crucial for navigation and obstacle avoidance by Mars rovers. However, frequent dust storms degrade rock surface textures, and the wide range of rock scales—from sub-meter to ten-meter—further complicates segmentation, especially under the strict computational constraints of rover hardware. This paper proposes a lightweight network named MAFT, specifically designed for Martian rock segmentation. The network builds upon the Adaptive Frequency Transformer (AFFormer) and constructs an improved backbone termed the Improved Adaptive Frequency Transformer (IAFFormer). By replacing the traditional self-attention mechanism with a frequency-domain approach, it captures global feature dependencies while reducing the computational complexity from quadratic to linear. The spatially isolated 1 × 1 convolutions in the pixel descriptor module are further replaced with Adaptive Kernel Convolution (AKConv), enabling the backbone to dynamically adjust its sampling positions to conform to the irregular and diverse morphologies of Martian rocks. An Enhanced Multidimensional Convolutional Attention (EMCA) module is introduced as the decoding structure. By integrating max-pooling in the squeeze stage and adaptive dilated convolutions in the excitation stage, EMCA strengthens the boundary perception and long-range dependency modeling of dust-covered rocks without increasing the parameter count. Additionally, we constructed a dataset of Martian rocks for the Zhurong rover (TWMARS-V2) and conducted experiments using a synthetic dataset (SynMars) and a real dataset (MarsData-V2). Experimental results demonstrate that MAFT achieves the highest segmentation accuracy among all compared methods, with only 2.97 M parameters and 15.49 G FLOPs. On the TWMARS-V2 dataset, Pixel Accuracy (PA) reaches 98.17%, and IoU reaches 88.90%. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Exploring the Moon, Mars, and Asteroids Based on In Situ and Remote Sensing Measurements (Second Edition))
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30 pages, 8852 KB  
Article
Lunar Radar Sounding for Ice Deposits and Subsurface Void Detection: Preliminary System Design and Performance Analysis
by Mohamed El Awag, Antonio Genova, Roberto Orosei, Fabrizio Bernardini, Alessandro Frigeri, Caterina Rossi, Sebastian Emanuel Lauro, Elena Pettinelli and Francesca Altieri
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(11), 1776; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18111776 - 1 Jun 2026
Viewed by 588
Abstract
Shallow lunar subsurface characterization is a key requirement for future exploration activities, particularly for in situ resource utilization and the identification of protected environments for human and robotic operations. This work presents the preliminary design and performance assessment of an orbital very high [...] Read more.
Shallow lunar subsurface characterization is a key requirement for future exploration activities, particularly for in situ resource utilization and the identification of protected environments for human and robotic operations. This work presents the preliminary design and performance assessment of an orbital very high frequency (VHF) radar sounder tailored to the detection of subsurface water ice deposits and lava tubes at depths relevant to exploration. The analysis combines physically based modeling of acquisition geometry, electromagnetic properties, and surface roughness with quantitative evaluation of signal-to-noise and signal-to-clutter ratios. Results indicate that surface clutter constitutes the primary limitation for subsurface detectability in orbital sounding, thereby driving both instrument design and mission geometry. Quantitative performance bounds are derived for penetration depth and spatial resolution, providing guidance for identifying regions where subsurface access may be achieved with reduced operational risk. One-dimensional electromagnetic simulations further demonstrate the advantages of operating in the VHF regime. While lower-frequency systems retain sensitivity to some subsurface interfaces, their limited vertical resolution prevents reliable separation of closely spaced structures, such as the roof and floor of lava tubes. In contrast, the proposed VHF sounder enables clear separation of multiple subsurface interfaces, allowing geometric characterization of cavities and improved discrimination of ice-bearing layers. These results establish the feasibility and relevance of a VHF orbital radar sounder as a dedicated tool for shallow lunar subsurface investigations in support of future exploration missions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Exploring the Moon, Mars, and Asteroids Based on In Situ and Remote Sensing Measurements (Second Edition))
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