OBSERVATIONS OF PLANETARY AND SATELLITE ATMOSPHERES AND SURFACES

The full opening of the submillimeter range with the operation of Herschel is expected to prove very useful for the study of planetary atmospheres and surfaces. Areas of anticipated progress include: (i) the origin and evolu-tion of the Giant Planets, from improved determinations of the abundance of deuterium and helium (ii) the ori-gin of the external source of oxygen in the Giant Planets and Titan (iii) several compositional and physical aspects of planetary atmospheres, especially the issue of vertical transport in Uranus and Neptune and the martian photo-chemistry and (iv) the thermophysical and compositional properties of planetary surfaces, including the size distri-bution of transneptunian objects. The high sensitivity of all instruments and the diversity of their spectral resolu-tions is well suited to the diversity of size and atmospheric pressure within the bodies of the Solar System. Key words: Submillimeter observations – Planets and satel-lites: atmospheres and surface