Ongoing Shallow Water Ice Mapping Campaign by the Mars Climate Sounder

Abstract:

Non-polar shallow water ice reservoirs on Mars have been deposited during the last few obliquity excursions when significant volumes of polar ice were transferred to the mid-to-low latitudes in the form of snow precipitation. This ice was subsequently capped by insulating lag deposits, which may have kept it in quasi-equilibrium with the atmosphere since then. This water constitutes a target of prime interest for future exploration because 1) its distribution and physical properties will constrain the global Amazonian climate, and 2) because of its potential as an In-Situ Resource for future human exploration.

Where ice is present within the top few tens of cm of the surface, seasonal temperature trends as observed from orbit are measurably impacted. Leveraging this relationship between ice depth and surface thermal response, several teams have successfully mapped the depth to the water ice table globally but at very low to low spatial resolution, i.e., from 100s to 10s of km, or over an infinitesimal fraction of the Martian surface at high spatial resolution (i.e., 100m sampling).

On this poster, we present our strategy to generate a medium resolution (i.e., < 10 km) ice depth map in the North hemisphere of Mars (80-30°N) bridging the coverage and spatial resolution gaps between existing mapping products. The expected nearly-complete coverage in the Northern mid and high latitudes combined with ~10km-kilometer resolution will allow us to resolve large geological features and systematically characterize their relationships with shallow subsurface ice presence. The data are being acquired as part of a dedicated mapping campaign by the NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Climate Sounder instrument during its fifth extended mission. The acquisition will end in mid Mars Year 36 (early 2022) and the numerical ice depth derivation will start at that time. Surface temperature maps already available from the initial acquisition phase in Mars Year 35 show clear correlation with various geological units.

This work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contact with NASA. Government support acknowledged.