Searching for ``Home Plates'' Near Gusev Crater, Mars: Spirit's Regional Context in an Area of Explosive Volcanism

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[5464] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Remote Sensing, [5480] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Volcanism, [6225] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Mars, [8428] Volcanology / Explosive Volcanism

Scientific paper

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit has spent the last 4.5 years of its mission exploring the vicinity of a feature called Home Plate in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater, Mars. Home Plate is an 80m-wide plateau of layered, light-toned rocks interpreted to be a pyroclastic deposit based on its composition of altered alakali basaltic clastics, its enrichment in volatiles, and the presence of a bomb-sag. Discoveries of sulfate- and silica-rich soils and outcrops near Home Plate, as well as a geochemical gradient across Home Plate, suggest that alteration by hydrothermal fluids occurred at this site. However, probable source vents have not been found along Spirit’s traverse, and the spatial and temporal extents of pyroclastic activity in Gusev Crater are currently unknown. In this work, we test the hypothesis that explosive volcanism was widespread in the Gusev Crater region. We have performed a comprehensive photomorphologic survey of a 300km square region that includes Gusev Crater and the southern flank of Apollinaris Patera. Using images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Context Camera (CTX) onboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and from the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC) onboard Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), we have searched for “Home Plates,” possible vents, and other morphologic indicators of hydrovolcanic activity. We have identified 80+ quasi-circular, light-toned, layered features similar to Home Plate in hill structures above the Gusev lava plains, in the hummocky terrain SE of Thira Crater, and NW of Gusev in Zephyria Mensae. In some locations, these “Home Plates” are paired with conical structures (similar to the “von Braun” or “Goddard” features in the Columbia Hills). We have also performed a visible to near-infrared hyperspectral survey of the same region using data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument on MRO. Seven high-resolution (18 m/pix) CRISM observations cover locations where we have identified “Home Plates,” in addition to the 13 high-resolution observations of the Columbia Hills. We have searched these data for mineral signatures consistent with the composition of explosive volcanic materials and for spectral similarities to Home Plate. Although the Gusev Crater region is extensively dust-covered, we observe some mineralogic diversity in the orbital data.

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