Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agufm.p71a0454w&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #P71A-0454
Other
5464 Remote Sensing, 6225 Mars
Scientific paper
Over the past two decades, imaging radar has become a useful remote sensing tool for planetary mapping. Because much of the bedrock geology on Mars is likely covered by sand and dust, a radar imaging system should be considered a necessary compliment to other remote sensing instruments at or planned for Mars. In anticipation of such a mission and future terrestrial radar missions, radar backscatter and transmission experiments were conducted for dry and wet sand and a Mars analog dust. To address the ability of radar to penetrate sand and dust, the experiments measured the change in radar signal for various radar and target properties to determine attenuation (dB/m), or the decrease in signal per meter. The transmission experiments were conducted using dry sand (0.3% water), two wet sands (5 and 11% water), and dry Carbondale Red Clay (CRC), an analog for martian dust because of its grain size (2 μm) and iron content (19% Al2O3 and 12% Fe2O3). The backscatter experiment was performed using dry sand, and all experiments were run over the frequency range of imaging radars (0.5 to 12 GHz). Results show that dry sand, sand with 5% water content, and dry CRC dust all result in attenuation less than 2 dB/m at 0.5 GHz. Sand with 11% water results in attenuation of only 4 dB/m. Although it is expected that low-frequency radar will have low attenuation, the low attenuations for wet sand challenge previous claims that subsurface penetration requires extremely dry sand. Those attenuations also question the ability of a low frequency Mars radar to detect moist soil efficiently. At higher frequencies, attenuation due to wet sand increases rapidly to values that prohibit significant penetration, but dry sand exhibits a much slower increase in attenuation. At 9.6 GHz, dry sand causes attenuation of only 5.9 dB/m. It is therefore expected that higher-frequency (shorter wavelength) radar energy can penetrate dry sand deposits, possibly as much as a meter depending on the sensitivity of the radar. The attenuation due to the CRC dust is still low (5.8 dB/m) at 1.24 GHz but rises to 67.4 dB/m at 9.6 GHz. These results suggest that a multi-frequency Mars imaging radar would be most useful. Results can also help select other radar parameters to meet the science goals of future radar missions.
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