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Microscopic Views of Martian Soils and Evidence for Incipient Diagenesis
- Publication Year :
- 2014
- Publisher :
- United States: NASA Center for Aerospace Information (CASI), 2014.
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Abstract
- Mars landed missions returned im-ages at increasingly higher spatial resolution (Table 1). These images help to constrain the microstructure of Martian soils, i.e. the grain-by-grain association of chemistry and mineralogy with secondary properties, such as albedo, color, magnetic properties, and mor-phology (size, shape, texture). The secondary charac-teristics are controlled by mineralogical composition as well as the geo-setting (transport and weathering modes, e.g. water supply, pH, atmospheric properties, exposure to radiation, etc.). As of today this association is poorly constrained. However, it is important to un-derstand soil-forming processes on the surface of Mars. Here we analyze high-resolution images of soils re-turned by different landed missions. Eventually these images must be combined with other types of data (chemistry and mineralogy at small spatial scale) to nail down the microstructure of Martian soils.
- Subjects :
- Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- NASA Technical Reports
- Publication Type :
- Report
- Accession number :
- edsnas.20140009563
- Document Type :
- Report