Three nonparallel fault systems occur in the Victoria quadrangle of Mercury. The most prominent system (Victoria system) includes the NNW‐SSE trending Victoria Rupes‐Endeavour Rupes‐Antoniadi Dorsum (VEA) array, one of the major fault alignments on the planet, and shorter parallel fault arrays. West and northwest of the Victoria system, two additional fault systems with NE‐SW (Larrocha system) and NW‐SE (Carnegie system) trends, are found. The timing analysis reveals that the three systems are coeval and were active until ~3.7 Ga. Measures of rim offset within faulted craters on the VEA array and on Carnegie Rupes segment of the Carnegie system were used to derive the kinematics of faults and to perform a finite stress inversion, which provides an ENE‐WSW trending regional shortening axis. Results of the stress inversion and age relationships, together with geometrical and morpho‐structural observations, suggest that the NE‐SW and NW‐SE systems acted as right‐transcurrent and left‐transpressional, respectively, at the time when the computed strain field was active. The distribution of the three systems spatially coincides with the boundaries of the high‐Mg region and of other regional geochemical terranes. Lateral geomechanical variation of the crust combined with tidal despinning and global contraction processes drove the localization and slip pattern of faults in a kinematically consistent displacement field. Moreover, crustal heterogeneities controlled the lateral changes in density and spacing of fault segments along the VEA. Following the demise of faulting, the established lateral variation of geometry along the VEA favored the growth of volcanic vents at high‐permeability segment boundaries.

In 2015 May, the Southern hemisphere of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko became visible by the OSIRIS cameras on-board the Rosetta spacecraft. The resolution was high enough to carry out a detailed analysis of the surface morphology, which is quite different from the Northern hemisphere. Previous works show that fine particle deposits are the most extensive geological unit in the Northern hemisphere. In contrast, the Southern hemisphere is dominated by outcropping consolidated terrain. In this work, we provide geomorphological maps of the Southern hemisphere with the distinction of both geological units and linear features. The geomorphological maps described in this study allow us to gain a better understanding of the processes shaping the comet nucleus and the distribution of primary structures such as fractures and strata.

The Kuiper quadrangle (H06) is located at the equatorial zone of Mercury and encompasses the area between 288°E – 360°E and 22.5°N – 22.5°S. Using the NASA MESSENGER data, we compiled a geological map of the quadrangle at a 1:3,000,000 scale. The mapping was mainly based on photo-interpretation of an MDIS (Mercury Dual Imaging System) monochrome 166 m/pixel basemap. Additional datasets were also considered: stereo-DTM of the region, mosaics with high-incidence illumination, and the MDIS global color mosaic. The map shows that the quadrangle is characterized by the prevalence of crater materials which are distinguished into three classes based on their degradation degree. Different plain units were also identified and classified on the basis of their density of cratering. Several structures, mainly represented by contractional faults, were mapped in all quadrangle areas. The map represents the first complete geologic survey of H06 at this scale and provides a highly detailed analysis of the Kuiper quadrangle’s surface geology.

The stereo camera (STC) is one of three channels of the spectrometer and imagers for Mercury Planet Orbiter BepiColombo Integrated Observatory SYStem (SIMBIOSYS), which will be on board the Mercury Planetary Orbiter of the ESA mission BepiColombo. SIMBIOSYS includes also an high resolution imaging channel (HRIC), providing images at spatial resolution of 5m/pixel at the periherm, and the VIS-NIR spectrometer (VIHI) that will provide the global mapping of the Mercury's surface in the spectral range 400–2200 nm, with a spectral sampling of 6.25 nm, and the spatial resolution of 400m/pixel at the periherm. The main scientific objective of STC is the global mapping of the entire surface of the Mercury in 3D and colors with a scale factor of 50m/pixel at the periherm. It will allow to generate the digital terrain model (DTM) of the entire surface improving the interpretation of morphological features at different scales and topographic relationships. The harsh environment of the Mercury will strongly affect the functionalities and performance of the instruments reducing the resources allocated to the payload. Even for the stereo camera, as for most of the instrument on board BepiColombo, a novel design had to be considered. We have implemented an original optical design, modifying a classical configurations, and a new technique of acquiring the stereo pairs for generating the DTM of the surface. The new technique will have an impact on the software chain generating the DTM and on the observation strategy. The stereo camera consists of two channels, looking at the surface at ±20° from the nadir direction, converging on the same bidimensional focal plane assembly, with no mechanical movable parts. The configuration of the focal plane assembly allows to apply the push-frame technique to acquire the stereo images.

Geological units on Earth are defined by several parameters besides the stratigraphic ones, such as rock textures, lithology, composition, and environmental conditions of their origin (numerous and diverse magmatic, volcanic, metamorphic and sedimentary environments). On the other hand, from the Apollo era onward, planetary ‘geologic’ mapping has been carried out using a photo-interpretative approach mainly on panchromatic and monochromatic images. This limited the definition of geological units to morpho-stratigraphic considerations so that units were mainly defined by their stratigraphic position, surface textures and morphology, and attribution to general emplacement processes (a few related to magmatism, some broad sedimentary environments, some diverse impact domains, and all with uncertainties of interpretation). Hence, the two products are still separated by an important conceptual and effective gap which makes the traditional planetary morpho-stratigraphic maps unable to satisfy fully the needs of modern planetary exploration, i.e. an optimised product to define mission strategy in terms of target selection, exploration traverse definition and resource evaluation for ISRU purposes. One of the approaches that might close this gap is to integrate spectral, color and compositional information into morpho-stratigraphic maps, thus generating spectro-morphic or geo-stratigraphic maps.The PLANMAP team has explored diverse methods for the integration of color variation and spectral information into planetary geological maps that diverge on the bases of the data available, the planetary surface under consideration (Moon, Mars and Mercury),the  geological environments and the scale of mapping. PLANMAP received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement N. 776276.

This study has compiled the first impact-crater dataset for Mercury with diameters greater than 400 m by a multimodal deep-learning pipeline. We present an enhanced deep learning framework for large-scale planetary crater detection, extending the YOLOLens architecture through the integration of multimodal inputs: optical imagery, digital terrain models (DTMs), and hillshade derivatives. By incorporating morphometric data, the model achieves robust detection of impact craters that are often imperceptible in optical imagery alone, especially in regions affected by low contrast, degraded rims, or shadow-dominated illumination. The resulting catalogs LU6M371TGT for the Moon and ME6M300TGT for Mercury constitute the most comprehensive automated crater inventories to date, demonstrating the effectiveness of multimodal learning and cross-planet transfer. This work highlights the critical role of terrain information in planetary object detection and establishes a scalable, high-throughput pipeline for planetary surface analysis using modern deep learning tools. To validate the pipeline, we compare its predictions against the manually annotated catalogs for the Moon, Mercury, and several regional inventories, observing close agreement across the full diameter spectrum, revealing a high level of confidence in our approach. This work presents a spatial density analysis, comparing the spatial density maps of small and large craters highlighting the uneven distribution of crater sizes across Mercury. We explore the prevalence of kilometer-scale (1–5 km range) impact craters, demonstrating that these dominate the crater population in certain regions of Mercury’s surface.