Geodynamical evolution of rocky planets: Combining models and observations

Understanding the interior of rocky planets such as Mercury, the Moon, Mars, and Venus helps us to put the Earth in a global planetary context. The surfaces of terrestrial planets that we observe today record billions of years or evolution and interior processes and can help us to reconstruct the interior history of such planets. Geological and geophysical data of rocky planets in our Solar System have dramatically advanced our understanding of the interior structure and thermal evolution of these bodies.

Over the past decades, large-scale numerical simulations of interior evolution have grown to become one of the most powerful approaches to model the interior of planetary bodies in our Solar System and beyond. Geodynamic models are used to investigate the evolution of the interior that ultimately affects the distribution of seismic velocities, surface heat flow, and partial melting of the mantle. Combined with constraints derived from planetary mission…