Mars Science Laboratory CheMin Data From the Glen Torridon Region and the Significance of Lake-Groundwater Interactions in Interpreting Mineralogy and Sedimentary History

Creators: Thorpe, Michael T.; Bristow, Thomas F.; Rampe, Elizabeth B.; Tosca, Nicholas J.; Grotzinger, J. P.; Bennett, K. A.; Achilles, C. N.; Blake, D. F.; Chipera, S. J.; Downs, G.; Downs, R. T.; Morrison, S. M.; Tu, V.; Castle, N.; Craig, P.; Des Marais, D. J.; Hazen, R. M.; Ming, D. W.; Morris, R. V.; Treiman, A. H.; Vaniman, D. T.; Yen, A. S.; Vasavada, A. R.; Dehouck, E.; Bridges, J. C.; Berger, J.; McAdam, A.; Peretyazhko, T.; Siebach, K. L.; Bryk, A. B.; Fox, V. K.; Fedo, C. M.

Abstract

The Glen Torridon (GT) region in Gale crater, Mars is a region with strong clay mineral signatures inferred from orbital spectroscopy. The CheMin X-ray diffraction (XRD) instrument onboard the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, measured some of the highest clay mineral abundances to date within GT, complementing the orbital detections. GT may also be unique because in the XRD patterns of some samples, CheMin identified new phases, including: (a) Fe-carbonates, and (b) a phase with a novel peak at 9.2 Å. Fe-carbonates have been previously suggested from other instruments onboard, but this is the first definitive reporting by CheMin of Fe-carbonate. This new phase with a 9.2 Å reflection has never been observed in Gale crater and may be a new mineral for Mars, but discrete identification still remains enigmatic because no single phase on Earth is able to account for all of the GT mineralogical, geochemical, and sedimentological constraints. Here, we modeled XRD profiles and propose an interstratified clay mineral, specifically greenalite-minnesotaite, as a reasonable candidate. The coexistence of Fe-carbonate and Fe-rich clay minerals in the GT samples supports a conceptual model of a lacustrine groundwater mixing environment. Groundwater interaction with percolating lake waters in the sediments is common in terrestrial lacustrine settings, and the diffusion of two distinct water bodies within the subsurface can create a geochemical gradient and unique mineral front in the sediments. Ultimately, the proximity to this mixing zone may have controlled the secondary minerals preserved in sedimentary rocks exposed in GT.

Additional Information

© 2022 The Authors. This article has been contributed to by U.S. Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. The authors are grateful to Joseph Tamborksi, Ben Tutolo, Scott McLennan, Joel Hurowitz, Jen Eigenbrode, and Stuart Turner for fruitful discussions and knowledge on Earth environments, geochemical models, and sedimentary processes. Additionally, we are sincerely grateful for the amazing MSL science and engineering teams. The authors would like to thank Juan Carlos Corona and David Jenkins for providing XRD patterns for Fe-talc phases and for many helpful discussions on this unique phase. We also thank Robert Reynolds Jr. for helping with the NEWMOD software. We would like to note here though that the use of any software to construct models or refinements in this manuscript software does not imply government endorsement. Some of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institue of Technology, and under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Sapce Admistration (NASA). Lastly, we would like to acknowledge Rebecca Smith, Jesse Tarnas, and an anonymous reviewer as well as JGR editor, Deanne Rodgers, for helping improve this manuscript. Data Availability Statement. All Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity data products and data sets, including CheMin data, Mars images, and APXS data are archived at the NASA Planetary Data Systems and are available at https://pds-geosciences.wustl.edu/missions/msl/ (Gellert, 2013; Vaniman, 2013). APXS data used in this study specifically can be accessed through O'Connell-Cooper et al. (2022). CheMin XRD data presented in this paper is also archived the CheMin Open Data Repository (ODR; at https://odr.io/CheMin). The geochemical mixing model for this work is also archived on a FAIR repository and can be accessed at M. Thorpe et al. (2022).

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Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: American Geophysical Union
Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research. Planets, 127(11), Art. No. e2021JE007099, ISSN: 2169-9097.