Orbital identification of hydrated silica in Jezero crater, Mars
Abstract
Silica has the highest demonstrated potential of any phase to preserve microfossils on Earth and therefore may host potential biosignatures on Mars. We detected hydrated silica in Jezero crater, the landing site of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Mars 2020 rover mission, by applying Dynamic Aperture Factor Analysis/Target Transformation to images from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars. Hydrated silica detections with Dynamic Aperture Factor Analysis/Target Transformation were verified using commonly accepted Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars analysis methods. The morphology of geologic units associated with silica was characterized with high‐resolution imaging. Several hypotheses are presented for the formation environment of hydrated silica. All are testable via in situ investigation. We assess the likelihood of silica to preserve biosignatures in these different scenarios based on habitability considerations and biosignature preservation in Earth analog environments and materials. Also reported are possible detections of hydrated silica in the Nili Fossae basement and olivine‐rich units, as well as Al‐phyllosilicate within Jezero crater.
Additional Information
© 2019 American Geophysical Union. Received 31 JUL 2019; Accepted 1 NOV 2019; Accepted article online 6 NOV 2019; Published online 25 NOV 2019. We thank Steve Ruff and David Des Marais for thorough and thoughtful reviews that significantly improved the quality of the manuscript. We thank Vivian Sun for comments and discussion that improved the quality of this manuscript. We thank Ralph Milliken for many useful discussions. We thank the CRISM "Fandango" data analysis working group for helping to verify our hydrated silica detections, especially Frank Seelos and Raymond Arvidson. We thank Jay Dickson and The Murray Lab at Caltech for providing CTX and HiRISE mosaics. We thank the MRO team for the proposal, development, and execution of the mission that collected the data used here. Partial support to J. F. M. and J. D. T. via Grant NNX13AK72G through the NASA Mars Data Analysis Program is gratefully acknowledged. Author Contributions: J. D. T. and H. L. developed DAFA/TT with primary advisement from J. F. M., advisement from X. Z., and feedback from E. S. A. that improved the method. J. D. T. used DAFA/TT to detect hydrated silica and used traditional CRISM data analysis to verify the detection, and wrote the manuscript. T. A. G. provided input regarding the geologic units associated with silica and geomorphological interpretations. C. H. K. and M. S. B. helped significantly with geomorphologic interpretations and figure development. Y. I. and M. P. processed CRISM images through their pipeline to cross‐verify detections and generate more easily interpretable data. All authors contributed to the interpretation and final version of the manuscript. Data Availability Statement: The data sets used in this study are available on Harvard Dataverse.Attached Files
Published - Tarnas_et_al-2019-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf
Supplemental Material - grl59827-sup-0001-2019gl085584-s01.docx
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 99688
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20191106-100322009
- NNX13AK72G
- NASA
- Created
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2019-11-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field