Numerical Analysis of Putative Rock Glaciers on Mount Sharp, Gale Crater, Mars

The presence of buried glacial ice and putative extinct rock glaciers in Mars’ equatorial regions has implications for understanding its climate history and sensitivity to changes in insolation and has significant implications for past global redistribution of the water ice cryosphere. We quantify the morphology of rock glacier- “like” features on the northern slopes of Aeolis Mons (known also as Mount Sharp) within Gale crater and use this information to evaluate a possible rock glacier origin for these forms. Detailed morphometric evaluation of cross and long profiles of these lobate features, which exhibit higher slopes at their heads, lower slopes at their distal edge, and a convex upward cross-sectional profile and oversteepened sides, resembles active terrestrial rock glaciers. However, the absence of a chevron wrinkle pattern and sublimation features could indicate extensive aeolian reworking and the lack of deflation could indicate a higher rock to ice mixture. The lack of cratering surfaces relative to the cratered surfaces that they overly could indicate a younger age and are possibly indistinguishable in age from the capping units of Mount Sharp, which may have once been more laterally extensive and may have been the source of these mass wasting forms.

Field Testing of an Integrated Surface/Subsurface Modeling Technique for Planetary Exploration

While there has been much interest in developing ground-penetrating radar (GPR) technology for rover-based planetary exploration, relatively little work has been done on the data collection process. Starting from the manual method, we fully automate GPR data collection using only sensors typically found on a rover. Further, we produce two novel data products: (1) a three-dimensional, photorealistic surface model coupled with a ribbon of GPR data, and (2) a two-dimensional, topography-corrected GPR radargram with the surface topography plotted above. Each result is derived from only the onboard sensors of the rover, as would be required in a planetary exploration setting. These techniques were tested using data collected in a Mars analogue environment on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic. GPR transects were gathered over polygonal patterned ground similar to that seen on Mars by the Phoenix Lander. Using the techniques developed here, scientists may remotely explore the interaction of the surface topography and subsurface structure as if they were on site.