International Research School of Planetary Science
and
IRSPS
A not-for-profit University Foundation and its spin-off
both devoted to the exploration of Earth and Space
EARTH AND SOLAR SYSTEM AS LABORATORIES FOR THE EVOLUTION OF PLANETS
The study, the investigation and the exploration of our planet is deeply-rooted inside our hearts and minds. This yearning pushed the first Homo sapiens to leave the lands in Africa to spread up to cover the entire Earth. After about 100,000 years we are still here looking at the Solar System planets and looking a way to reach them. We are the same that crossed the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, the Bering Strait. Our expectations, our illusions and our wisdom are the same and they push us to gamble our life to visit remote and secluded horizons.
At the International Research School of Planetary Sciences and at IRSPS srl we want to celebrate this marvellous ingenuity that make us tireless discoverers of land and science by studying the Earth and Planets, by using technology to explore them and diverging from the normal paths.
We are geologists, astrophysicists, astrobiologists and explorers devoted to Science and Discovery. We want to transmit our knowledge and enthusiasm through scientific work and higher education.
Our living Earth
Earth is an enormous homeostatic system where the different terrestrial spheres -geosphere, atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere – concur in its evolution.
The Earth is a single, huge, and long-lasting experiment that lasts for the past 4.5 billions of years. We cannot repeat this experiment, but we can investigate the other planets in our Solar System and beyond to understand the planetary mechanisms.
This is the only way to avoid a reductionistic approach and to understand the planets as whole systems, as holistic objects.
Global Changes
Within the maze of the Earth history, changes are the main co-evolutionary mechanisms. They can be small and frequents almost to suggest an uninterrupted continuum. Others can be large and scattered in time.
Detection of changes on Earth and other planets can give us the key to depict own future.
Planetary Exploration
In order to understand the co-evolution of the planets, it is necessary to explore them from orbiters and landers/rovers. For extensive and thorough investigations the data must be at high-resolution, collected in situ, and analysed by an impressive range of instruments.
Planets are the new frontier for many scientists who must cooperate with engineers to construct compelling exploration programmes
Mars and Moon Settlements
However, the exploration and the impressive human ingenuity will push humans to settle in bodies of the Solar System, the first being the Moon and followed by Mars.
This must be done cautiously trying to not destroy our planetary friends in the same way we are destroying our Earth.
Higher Education
IRSPS, in collaboration with Università degli Studi “Gabriele d’Annunzio” (UdA), is involved in third-level education.