Physics
Scientific paper
Dec 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.u11b0027c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #U11B-0027
Physics
0475 Permafrost, Cryosphere, And High-Latitude Processes (0702, 0716), 0480 Remote Sensing, 0702 Permafrost (0475), 0798 Modeling, 6225 Mars
Scientific paper
The Phoenix Lander, which landed on the northern plains of Mars on 25 May 2008, used its Robotic Arm (RA) to dig six trenches during its nominal 90-sol mission: Dodo-Goldilocks, Snow White, Cupboard, Neverland, Burn Alive, and Stone Soup. During excavation of the first five of these, the RA encountered hard material interpreted to be the ice table, and the Stereo Surface Imager (SSI) imaged the exposed materials using 15 filters spanning a wavelength range from 445 to 1001 nm. Materials exposed in the Dodo- Goldilocks and Snow White trenches are spectroscopically dissimilar: Dodo-Goldilocks hard material is brighter relative to the surrounding soil, and has a distinct downturn around 800 nm resulting from a dusty ice with low soil-to-ice ratio. Snow White hard stuff varies in brightness and spectral shape depending on the phase angle, with low-phase angle images showing dark material and higher phase angles showing more soil-like material. The Snow White material does not have the strong 800-nm downturn seen in Dodo- Goldilocks, because the soil-to-ice ratio is high as inferred by the rapid development of a sublimation lag; however, the albedo variation with phase angle could be due to strong forward-scattering at low phase angles, consistent with icy material. A modified Hapke model is used to estimate the relative abundances of water ice and dust in the Dodo- Goldilocks and Snow White materials, with dehydrated palagonite as an analogue for dust . The ice exposed at Dodo-Goldilocks must be relatively dust-free, since only a small amount of dust is needed to obscure water ice absorptions. In our modeling, we find that as little as 5 wt% 20-um dust is enough to completely mask the 1001 nm absorption in 1-mm grain size water ice. Dodo-Goldilocks spectra can have up to a 20% drop in reflectance from 800 nm to 1001 nm, which is best-matched in our Hapke model by water ice with path lengths on the order of 2-3 mm. The Snow White dark materials typically have a small downturn at approximately 900 nm, with a depth on the order of a few percent. This could be the result of finer-grained ice or a higher dust:ice ratio. Further modeling is needed to understand the behavior of the dark and bright material at the Snow White trench.
Arvidson Ray E.
Blaney Diana
Cull Selby
Morris Richard V.
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