The Europlanet RI TransNational Access Planetary Analogue Terrain Laboratory (PATLab)

A proposal entitled Europlanet Research Infrastructure (RI)has been submitted to the EU Seventh Framework Programme(FP7). This aims to “consolidate the integration of the planetaryscience community (which started with Europlanet’sFP6 Coordination Action), and to integrate a major distributedEuropean infrastructure to be shared, fed and expandedby all planetary scientists”. “The research infrastructureneeded to address the major planetary science questionsextends beyond the space missions per se. It requiresa diversity of tools that need to be used with maximum synergy,with numerical modelling and results from laboratoryactivities being essential to properly interpret observationsand propose new theoretical models”1. To addressthis need, TransNational Access activities have been proposedthat will for the first time open to a broad communityof users a unique and comprehensive set of laboratoryfacilities and field sites tailored to the needs of planetaryresearch. One such TransNational Access (TNA) facilityis the Aberystwyth University Planetary Analogue TerrainLaboratory (PATLab). This paper presents an overviewof the PATLab, and describes the analogue terrain, availablerobotic, instrumentation, and performance evaluationmeasurement apparatus, software-based simulation facilities,and PATLab access by the planetary research community