HiRISE-CRISM Meeting, Flagstaff, 22 May 06

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HiRISE-CRISM Meeting, Flagstaff, 22 May 06
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MOLA and Ancient Oceans

• The North Polar region is unusually smooth and
  the residual cap sits in a low basin could it
  have been mantled by a thick slurry of water from
  the Martian outflow channels?

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Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (Mister Oh)
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Compact Reconnaissance Infrared Spectrometer for
Mars (CRISM)
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How can CRISM help?

• Previous missions (eg. Viking IRTM, THEMIS, TES)
  could map albedo changes in poles to track amount
  of CO2 (H2O not well constrained by THEMIS) and
  map temperatures

• CRISM can map seasonal CO2 and H2O budgets using
  absorption bands at 3100 and 2700nm and can do
  temperatures, though not as well

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Nature of Swiss Cheese, spiders, dark spots and
polar layering

• CRISM will be able to give relative CO2/H2O ice
  abundance and identify dust and sulfates

• High spatial resolution images from CRISM in
  combination with HiRise images may help unravel
  these mysterious features

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Oceans of hydrated material?

• TES has detected two standard Mars surface types
  type 2 is restricted to Acidalia Planitia
  (Bandfield/Wyatt) and could represent
  hydrated/altered material, which CRISM should
  detect

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Surface Type 2 distribution
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Brightening of southern polar cap

• The southern polar cap brightens in springtime
  could this be due to small snow flakes?
• CRISM Emission phase function (EPF) measurements
  of the surface will help determine whether this
  is related to a photometric effect (eg. Ice grain
  size or shape)

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The question of a Sulfate Sea

• CRISM will follow up the OMEGA detection of
  gypsum in the North Polar Sand Dunes perhaps
  formed by high obliquity melting
• A potential Earth Analog is the Dry Lakes of
  Western Australia

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Gypsum in salt lakes
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Spirit _at_ Gusev
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HyMap dataset showing gypsum in dunes
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HyMap dataset showing gypsum in dunes (part 2)
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Other MRO instruments

• HiRISE sub-meter resolution camera
• SHARAD shallow radar sounder for sounding polar
  ice depths
• CTX (Context Imager) for providing context for
  images
• MCS (Mars Climate Sounder) for atmospheric
  studies clouds and atmosphere (removal of noise)

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