MATISSE a web-based tool to access, visualize and analyze high resolution minor bodies observation

In the recent years planetary exploration missions acquired data from minor bodies (i.e., dwarf planets, asteroid and comets) at a detail level never reached before. Since these objects often present very irregular shapes (as in the case of the comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko target of the ESA Rosetta mission) "classical" bidimensional projections of observations are difficult to understand. With the aim of providing the scientific community a tool to access, visualize and analyze data in a new way, ASI Science Data Center started to develop MATISSE (Multi-purposed Advanced Tool for the Instruments for the Solar System Exploration - http //tools.asdc.asi.it/matisse.jsp) in late 2012. This tool allows 3D web-based visualization of data acquired by planetary exploration missions the output could either be the straightforward projection of the selected observation over the shape model of the target body or the visualization of a high-order product (average/mosaic, difference, ratio, RGB) computed directly online with MATISSE. Standard outputs of the tool also comprise downloadable files to be used with GIS software (GeoTIFF and ENVI format) and 3D very high-resolution files to be viewed by means of the free software Paraview. During this period the first and most frequent exploitation of the tool has been related to visualization of data acquired by VIRTIS-M instruments onboard Rosetta observing the comet 67P. The success of this task, well represented by the good number of published works that used images made with MATISSE confirmed the need of a different approach to correctly visualize data coming from irregular shaped bodies. In the next future the datasets available to MATISSE are planned to be extended, starting from the addition of VIR-Dawn observations of both Vesta and Ceres and also using standard protocols to access data stored in external repositories, such as NASA ODE and Planetary VO.