Recognition and Detection of Impact Craters from EO Products

Impact craters represent a novel and fundamental field of research in Solar System studies. The quest for Earth impact craters entails the exploitation of Earth Observation products and of their processing for the identification of crater features, their detection and possible recognition. In the past decades, impacts by extraterrestrial bodies were regarded as an interesting but certainly not important phenomenon in the spectrum of geological processes affecting the dynamic evolution of the Earth. On the contrary, at the present, the attention devoted to this phenomenon is significantly increased, thanks to the important role played by planetary exploration. According to planetary scientists, impact cratering was a dominant geological process during the growth of the planetary bodies of the Solar System. The emerging of this kind of view of planets as geological objects, places the search for unknown impact craters as a basic element for the study of the evolution of the planets, and ...