A wide range of information on the characteristics of various landforms on different planetary bodies has been obtained from exploration missions conducted over the last few decades. Indictors of tectonic, volcanic, glacial, fluvial, and lacustrine activities were found on several solid surface bodies. Under the Planetary Science course at Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences (ELTE), a collaboration on educational methodologies between the Astronomy and Earth Science departments has been developed. The presentation modes were shaped to make BSc and MSc students familiar with the research methods and approaches used to address specific questions in this domain. A comparative evaluation of the surface landforms, along with their background characteristics (like gravity, temperature range, atmospheres, solid surface material composition), was also performed.

The whole curriculum was built based on groups of processes and surface conditions and not on planetary bodies to compare the same process under different environments. The main messages encouraged the students to integrate current knowledge with concepts from other classical university courses like physics, chemistry, geography, petrology, etc., while also pointing to existing knowledge gaps to be discovered in the future. As an additional optional part of the curriculum, students could suggest specific test types or even missions to clarify these unknown aspects (related physics and Earth science subjects are indicated in brackets). Details of the curriculum will be presented at the meeting.