The sounding radar operating from the orbiting platforms for studying the surfaces and subsurface of planets began to be applied, systematically, in the early 2000s with the Japanese Selene mission to the moon and MARSIS and SHARAD for Mars. These radars work, by transmitting a low frequency pulse, in the altimetric mode and some SAR processing is implemented on board or on the received data...
The Martian crust shows a magnetic contrast between the northern and southern hemispheres. Data from MGS and MAVEN reveal strong magnetization and E-W anomalies in the southern one whereas weak in both the northern one and within major impact basins. The origin of this magnetization remains uncertain. Exogenic (impacts) or endogenic (degree-1 convection or mantle plume) process could be the...
Just after the Moon, Mars is among the most pioneering research areas, as it constitutes a critical step forward in planetary exploration. Nevertheless, high-resolution insights into Martian magmatic evolution remain limited and largely biased towards large-scale landforms. For decades, the narrative on Martian volcanism emphasized a global decline in explosive volcanism in favor of dominant...
The paper presents the progress made on the concept of a swarm of rovers assisted by a drone for mapping the surface of Mars. The concept we presented a year ago is still being developed and improved. This year's work focused on implementing and integrating a drone built specifically for our project and positioning aspects.
Positioning for Mars exploration is particularly challenging...
Here we report spatial analysis of a large number of bedform patterns in eastern Noctis Labyrinthus (NL), Mars, which occur preferentially on very large, steep (up to ~30°) slopes, and interpret the features as extensive palaeo-dunefields. We base this aeolian genesis for the features on: i) their frequently oblique orientation to hillslopes, ii) their apparent interaction with topography...
One of the primary objectives of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission was to search for previously undetected trace gases that could be diagnostic of active geology or a biosphere. The first such gas was hydrogen chloride (HCl), detected with the ACS and NOMAD spectrometer suites. The presence of HCl on Mars was expected to be an indication of active magmatic processes. However, HCl was...
About one-third of the Martian surface contains water ice within the shallow ground. Many researchers see the thermodynamics of that ice as crucial for Martian climate history research and as possible source of water during future missions.
Shallow ice affects geomorphology as the ground cemented by the ice in pores turns into a solid rock. In some places exposed scarps show uncovered ice...
The mission was to explore a Mars-like environment in the valley of Tso Kar, one of the highest-altitude salt lakes, located at an elevation of 4,500 metres above sea level. This unique astrobiological area perfectly simulates conditions on the Red Planet. The team's main tasks were six path finder experiments included searching for and collecting samples of extremophilic organisms from the...
On Earth and Mars, aeolian (wind) transport causes sand grains to break down, which can result in mineralogic and textural changes to the sand. The nature of those changes currently represents a knowledge gap on Mars. Filling this knowledge gap could advance capabilities for provenance research that uses mineralogy to identify the sand sources of Martian dune fields. More broadly,...
Aeolian processes, such as accumulation, erosion, and transport, were investigated in the western part of Meridiani Planum. This is an equatorial region of Mars that was explored by the NASA Opportunity Rover of the Mars Exploration Rover mission. This area is also fully covered by high-resolution images taken by the HiRISE and CTX cameras of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The...
The surface topography of Mars is well-known but understanding of its subsurface structure is substantially more limited. Given this, identifying correlative relationships between the geomorphology of topographic features and subsurface faults in an analogue setting can potentially be applied to topographic data from Mars to yield insight into structural features and associated processes...
Expansive digital elevation models (DEMs) of surface topography are now available for many terrestrial planetary bodies. However, subsurface data for these bodies, particularly fault information, remains limited. Establishing a predictive relationship between DEM derived surface morphology and subsurface structures, like faults, could yield insight into tectonic and geologic processes on Earth...
