Mars CryoScout: Subsurface Exploration of the North Polar Cap

Details Mars CryoScout: Subsurface Exploration of the North Polar Cap Mars CryoScout: Subsurface Exploration of the North Polar Cap

Dec 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agufm.p12a0369s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #P12A-0369

Other

5410 Composition, 5462 Polar Regions, 5494 Instruments And Techniques, 6225 Mars

Scientific paper

The well documented layering of the Mars PLDs suggests that the polar caps, and the north polar cap in particular, are repositories of a climate archive that possibly spans many millions of years. Far more accessible, terrestrial ice sheets have been studied by coring to retrieve the pristine record of past chemical and physical properties, and to evaluate modification induced by time and stresses within the ice. On Mars' north polar cap, thermal probes are feasible and can provide a means, analogous to coring, of making subsurface observations. To explore the dominant climate cycles, it is postulated that tens of meters of depth, corresponding to the vertical separation of the major "MOC" layers, should be explored. Optical and spectroscopic analyses of the layers, which are presumably demarcated by embedded dust, contributes to the reconstruction of a timeline. Meltwater analysis is a convenient way to determine the soluble chemistry of that embedded dust, and to monitor gradients of the isotopic ratios of hydrogen and oxygen that reflect atmospheric conditions at the time the layer was deposited. As on Earth, local thermal measurements can be used to determine bulk mechanical properties of the cap, as well as estimating the geothermal gradient. A proposed mission that performs these observations will be described.

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