WIND, WATER, AND THE SANDS OF MARS

Cornell University 2010 The north polar region of Mars is dominated by massive ice deposits and sand seas, and has been thought to be the product of the arid processes typical of the current martian geologic epoch, the Amazonian. However, new results from near-infrared spectroscopy and high-resolution images indicate that liquid water, in addition to ice, has played a major role in producing the unique compositions and morphologies of sediments in this region, and potentially elsewhere on Mars, during the Amazonian. This first major goal of this work is to investigate the composition of north polar deposits by developing new methods to map the distribution of hydrated minerals, weathering rinds, and ferrous minerals using near-infrared spectra from the Mars Express OMEGA imaging spectrometer. The distribution of these minerals and phases places constraints on both the transport and aqueous history of sediments in the north polar region. While previous detections of aqueous alteration products in this region were limited to the sand sea of Olympia Undae, results presented in Chapter 2 indicate that hydrated minerals are ubiquitous throughout the north polar sand sea an