Tag Archives: Mars

Planets

Forming Mars

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Hi there! Of course, you know the planet Mars. You can here from it these days, since it is exceptionally close to our Earth. Don’t worry, this is a natural, geometrical phenomenon.

Anyway, it is a good time to observe it. But I will not speak of observing it, today. We will discuss its formation instead, because the issue of the formation of Mars remains a challenge. This is the opportunity to present The curious case of Mars’ formation, by James Man Yin Woo, Ramon Brasser, Soko Matsumura, Stephen J. Mojzsis, and Shigeru Ida. Astronomy and Astrophysics will publish it pretty soon.

Outline

Mars is too small
Forming planets from a disk
Two models of planetary formation
The composition challenge
Anticipating the composition
The study and its authors

Mars is too small

The following table gives you comparative characteristics of Venus, the Earth, and Mars.

Venus Earth Mars
Semimajor axis 0.723 AU 1.000 AU 1.524 AU
Eccentricity 0.007 0.017 0.093
Inclination 3.39° 0° 1.85°
Orbital period 224.7 d 365.25 d 686.96 d
Spin period -243.02 d 23.93 h 24.62 h
Mean diameter 12,104 km 12,742 km 6,779 km

The last line reveals a problem: Venus and the Earth are about the same size, while Mars is much smaller! But this is not the only problem: the compositions of the Earth and Mars are VERY different.

It is pretty easy to know the composition of the Earth: you just analyze samples. And for Mars? Just the same!

Interestingly, there are Martian meteorites on Earth. These are ejecta from impacts, which were ejected from Mars, and then traveled in the Solar System, until reaching our Earth.

In fact, over the tens of thousands of meteorites which have been found on Earth, a little more than one hundred were significantly different than the other ones, i.e. younger formation ages, a different oxygen isotopic composition, the presence of aqueous weathering products… Most of these meteorites were known as SNC, after the three groups they were classified into:

  • S for Shergottites, after the Shergotty meteorite (India, 1865),
  • N for Nakhlites, after the Nakhla meteorite (Egypt, 1911),
  • C for Chassignites, after the Chassigny meteorite (France, 1815).

Such a significant number of similar meteorites, which are that different from the other ones, suggests they come from a large body. Mars is an obvious candidate, which has been confirmed after the discovery that trapped gases in these meteorites are very similar to the ones, which are present in the atmosphere of Mars.

The Martian meteorite NWA (Northwest Africa) 2046, found in September 2003 in Algeria. This is a Shergottite. © Michael Farmer and Jim Strope.
The Martian meteorite NWA (Northwest Africa) 2046, found in September 2003 in Algeria. This is a Shergottite. © Michael Farmer and Jim Strope.

After that, the numerous space missions improved our knowledge of the Martian composition. And it finally appeared that both planets are essentially made of chondritic material. The Earth should accrete about 70% of enstatite chondrite (and same for the Moon), while Mars only about 50%. Chondrites are non-metallic meteorites, the enstatite chondrites being rich in the mineral enstatite (MgSiO3). These numbers are derived from the documented isotopic compositions of the Earth and Mars, i.e. the ratio of the different chemical elements. An isotope is a variant of a particular chemical element, which differs in neutron number.

If you want to convincingly simulate the formation of Mars, the product of your simulations should be similar to Mars in mass AND in composition. And this is very challenging. Let us see why, but first of all let us recall how to form planets from a disk.

Forming planets from a disk

At its early stage, a planetary system is composed of a proto-star, and a pretty flat disk, made of gas and dust. Then the dust accretes into clumps, which then collides to form planetary embryos, i.e. proto-planets. These embryos continue to grow with collisions, until forming the current planets. Meanwhile, the gas has dissipated.

Anyway, interactions between the protoplanets and between them and the gas can lead to planetary migration. This means that we cannot be sure whether the planets we know formed close to their current location. This makes room for several scenarios.

Two models of planetary formation

The obvious starting point is to assume that the planets formed close to their current locations. This so-called Classical model works pretty well for Venus, the Earth, Jupiter, Saturn… but not for Mars. The resulting Mars is too massive.

An idea for by-passing this problem is to start with a depletion of material at the location of Mars. This is equivalent to an excess inside the terrestrial orbit. In such a configuration, less material is available to the proto-Mars, which eventually has a mass, which is close to the present one.

You can get this excess of material inside the terrestrial orbit if you buy the Grand Tack scenario: when Jupiter formed, it created a gap in the inner disk, and the mutual interaction resulted in an inward migration of Jupiter, until reaching the present orbit of Mars. In moving inward (Type II migration), Jupiter pushed the material inward. Then, a 3:2 mean-motion resonance with Saturn occurred, which created another gap, and made Jupiter move outward, until its present location.

This way, you can form a planetary object, which is similar to Mars in mass and location.

But what about its composition?

The composition challenge

This is still a challenge. The composition of a planetary object is strongly affected by the one of the disk, where the object formed… which may not be its present location.

The authors added a free parameter to the model: the break location, which would split the protoplanetary disk into an inner and an outer region. The inner region would be rich in enstatite chondrites, while the outer one would be rich in ordinary chondrites.

A break location at 1.3 AU gives the best fit for the difference of composition between Mars and the Earth, for both formation scenarios (Classical and Grand Tack).

So, the Grand Tack with a break location at 1.3 AU could be the right scenario. But another possibility exists: the Classical scenario says that if Mars formed where it is, then it should be heavier. But what if Mars formed actually further from the Sun, and then migrated inward? Then, it would not need any depletion of material to have the right mass. And the break barrier should have been further than 1.3 AU. But you have to explain why it migrated inward.

Anticipating the composition

One of the good things with scenarios of formation is that thr gives more details on the outcomes, than actually observed. For instance, this study predicts the isotopic composition of 17O, 50Ti, 54Cr, 142Nd, 64Ni and 92Mo, in the Martian mantle. Further data, collected by space missions, will give additional constraints on these parameters, and test the validity of the present study. 8 missions are currently operational in orbit or on Mars, and InSight is en-route, after having been launched in May 2018. It should land on Mars on November 26, and will study its interior with a seismometer, and a heat transfer probe.

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Planets

There was water on Mars

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Hi there! Well, we already knew that there has been liquid water on the surface of Mars, a long time ago. Indeed, the space mission Mariner 9 imaged valley networks in 1972. Since then, several missions refined the data. The study I present today, Estimate of the water flow duration in large Martian fluvial systems, by Vincenzo Orofino, Giulia Alemanno, Gaetano Di Achille and Francesco Mancarella, uses the most recent observations to estimate the length and depth of former Martian rivers, and their duration of formation and erosion. This study has recently been accepted for publication in Planetary and Space Science.

Outline

Evidences of liquid water in the past
The geologic history of Mars
Use of recent data
Dynamics of formation of a river bed
Intermittence and humidity
No icy Noachian
The study and its authors

Evidences of liquid water in the past

The current atmosphere of Mars is pretty thin, its pressure being on average 0.6% the one of the Earth. Such a small atmospheric pressure prevents the existence of liquid water at the surface. Water could survive only as ice, otherwise would be just vaporized. And ice water has been found, particularly in the polar caps. But if the atmosphere were thicker in the past, then liquid water would have survived… and we know it did.

We owe to Mariner 9 a map of 85% of the Martian surface, which revealed in particular river beds, deltas, and lake basins. The study we discuss today focused on valley networks, which are particularly present in the southern highlands of Mars. These valleys are typically less than 5 km wide, but may extend over thousands of kms, and they reveal former rivers.

Nirgal Vallis seen by Mariner 9. © NASA
Nirgal Vallis seen by Mariner 9. © NASA

The history of these rivers is inseparable from the geological history of Mars.

The geologic history of Mars

We distinguish 3 mains eras in the geological history of Mars: the Noachian, the Hesperian, and the Amazonian.

The Noachian probably extended between 4.6 and 3.7 Gyr ago, i.e. it started when Mars formed. At that time, the atmosphere of Mars was much thicker that it is now, it generated greenhouse effect, and liquid water was stable on the surface. It even probably rained on Mars! During that era, the bombardment in the inner Solar System, including on Mars, was very intense, but anyway less intense than the Late Heavy Bombardment, which happened at the end of the Noachian. Many are tempted to consider it to be the cause of the change of era. Anyway, many terrains of the south hemisphere of Mars, and craters, date from the Noachian. And almost all of the river beds as well.

After the Noachian came the Hesperian, probably between 3.7 and 3.2 Gyr ago. It was a period of intense volcanic activity, during which the bombardment declined, and the atmosphere thinned. Then came the Amazonian, which is still on-going, and which is a much quieter era. The volcanic activity has declined as well.

So, almost all of the valley networks date from the Noachian. Let us now see how they formed.

Use of recent data

We owe to the space missions accurate maps of Mars. From these maps, the authors have studied a limited data set of 63 valley networks, 13 of them with a interior channel, the 50 remaining ones without. The interior channel is the former river bed, while the valley represents the area, which has been sculpted by the river. The absence of interior channel probably means that either they are too narrow to be detectable, or have been eroded.

These valley networks are located on sloppy areas, most of them close to the equator. The authors needed the following information:

  1. area,
  2. eroded volume,
  3. valley slopes,
  4. width and depth of the interior channel.

To get this information, they combined topographic data from the instrument MOLA (for Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter) on board Mars Global Surveyor (1997-2006) with THEMIS (THermal Emission Imaging System, on board Mars Odyssey, still operating). MOLA permits 3-D imagery, with a vertical resolution of 30 cm/pixel (in other words, the accuracy of the altitude) and a horizontal one of 460 m/pixel, while the THEMIS data used by the authors are 2D-data, with a resolution of 100 m /pixel. When the authors judged necessary, they supplemented these data with CTX data (ConTeXt camera, on board Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, still ongoing), with a resolution up to 6 m/pixel.

These information are very useful to estimate the formation time and the erosion rate of the valley network.

Dynamics of formation of a river bed

They estimated these quantities from the volume of sediments, which should have been transported to create the valley networks. The idea is, while water is flowing, assisted by the Martian surface gravity (fortunately, this number is very well known, and is roughly one-third of the gravity on Earth) and by the slope, it transports material. The authors assumed in their calculations that this material was only sediments, i.e. they neglected rock transport, and they did the maths.

Several competing models exist for sediment transport. This is actually difficult to constrain, given the uncertainties on the sediments themselves. Such phenomena also exist on Earth, but the numbers are very different for instance if you are in Iceland or in the Atacama Desert.

It also depends on the intermittence: is the water flow constant? You can say yes to make your life easier, but is it true? On Earth, you have seasonal variations… why not on Mars? A constant water flow means an intermittence of 100%, while no water means 0%.

And keep also in mind that the water flow depends on the atmospheric conditions: is the air wet or pretty arid? We can answer this question for the present atmospheric conditions, but how was it in the Noachian?

No icy Noachian

And this is one result of the present study: there must have been some evaporation in the Noachian, which means that it was not cold and icy. The authors show that such a Noachian would be inconsistent with the valley networks, as we presently observe them.

However, they get large uncertainties on the formation timescales of the valley networks, i.e. between 500 years and almost twice the age of the Solar System. They have anyway median numbers, i.e.

  • 30 kyr for a continuous sediment flow,
  • 500 kyr with an intermittence of 5%,
  • 3 Myr with an intermittence of 1%,
  • 30 Myr with an intermittence of 0.1%.

And from the data, they estimate that the intermittence should be in the range 1%-5%, which corresponds humid (5%) and semiarid/arid environments. This is how they can rule out the cold and icy Noachian.

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Moon

The lunar history

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(Alternative title: The search for the origin of the Late Heavy Bombardment)

Hi there! It is a pleasure for me to present you today a multi-disciplinary study, which mixes celestial mechanics with geochemistry. If you want to know the past of a planetary body, you must go backward: you start from the body as you observe it nowadays, and from this you infer the processes which made it evolve from its formation to its present state. In The timeline of the Lunar bombardment – revisited, by A. Morbidelli, D. Nesvorný, V. Laurenz, S. Marchi, D.C. Rubie, L. Elkins-Tanton, M. Wieczorek and S. Jacobson, the authors exploit our observations of the craters and the chemistry of the Moon, and simulations of the motion of asteroids in the early Solar System, to give new constraints on the bombardment of the Moon between 3.9 and 3.7 Gyr (billions of years) ago, which is famous as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB). We will see that the results have implications for Mars. This study has recently been accepted for publication in Icarus.

Outline

The Lunar basins
Origin of the LHB: cataclysm or accretion tail?
What siderophile elements tell us
Simulating the bombardment
Cataclysm possible, accretion tail preferred
Tungsten is another marker
Implications for Mars
Predictions
The study and its authors

The Lunar basins

Let us start from what we observe: the Lunar surface. This is a heavily cratered surface. Actually, the absence of atmosphere preserves it from erosion, and the small size of the Moon limits its heating, as a consequence the craters neither erode nor relax. Hence, the surface of the Moon is a signature of the activity in the early Solar System.

Let us focus on the largest structures, i.e. the maria and the basins. The maria are lava plains, which result from a volcanic activity of the early Moon. However, the basins are the largest impact craters. You can find below the largest ones, of course many smaller craters exist.

Basin Diameter (km)
South Pole-Aitken 2,600
Imbrium 1,100
Orientale 930
Serenitatis 920
Australe 880
Nectaris 860
Smythii 740
Crisium 740
Tranquillitatis 700
Tsiolkovsky-Stark 700
Fecunditatis 690
Mutus-Vlacq 690
Nubium 690

The early Moon was hot, because of the impact which created it. As a hot body, it stratified into a fluid core, a mantle and a crust, while cooling. The visible impact craters are younger than the crust, i.e. they are younger than 3.9 Gyr, and were created at least 600 Myr after the formation of the Moon… pretty late, hence due to the Late Heavy Bombardment.

Orientale Basin. © NASA
Orientale Basin. © NASA

Origin of the LHB: cataclysm or accretion tail?

Late Heavy Bombardment means that the inner Solar System have been intensively bombarded late after its genesis. But how did that happen? Two scenarios can be found in the literature:

  1. Cataclysm: the very young Solar System was very active, i.e. composed of many small bodies which collided, partly accreting… and became pretty quiet during some hundreds of Myr… before suddenly, a new phase of bombardment occurred.
  2. Accretion tail: the Solar System had a slowly decreasing activity, and the craters on the Moon are just the signature of the last 200 Myrs. The previous impacts were not recorded, since the surface was still molten.

The second scenario could be preferred, as the simplest one. The first one needs a cause which would trigger this second phase of bombardment. Anyway, many numerical simulations of the early Solar System got such an activity, as a dynamical phenomenon destabilizing the orbits of a group of small bodies, which themselves entered the inner Solar System and collided with the planets, accreting on them. The giant planets Jupiter and Saturn have a dominant dynamical influence on the small bodies of the Solar System, and could have triggered such an instability. One of the theories existing in the literature is the E-Belt, for extended belt. It would have been an internal extension of the Main Belt of asteroids, which would have been destabilized by a secular resonance with Saturn, and has finished as the impactors of the LHB. Why not, this is a theory.

When you model phenomena having occurred several billions years ago, you have so many uncertainties that you cannot be certain that your solution is the right one. This is why the literature proposes several scenarios. Further studies test them, and sometimes (this is the case here) give additional constraints, which refine them.

Thanks to the Apollo mission, samples of the Moon have been analyzed on Earth, and geochemistry can tell us many things on the history of a body. For the Moon, focus has been put on siderophile elements.

What siderophile elements tell us

A siderophile element is a chemical element which has affinity with iron. Among these elements are iron, iridium, palladium, platinum, rubidium… When a planetary body is hot, it tends to differentiate, and its heaviest elements, i.e. iron, migrate to the core. This results in a depletion of highly siderophile elements (HSE). Since a very small abundance of these elements has been observed, then we have no problem, thank you…

NO NO NO there is actually a problem, since these siderophile elements should be present in the impactors, which are supposed to have accreted on the Moon AFTER its stratification… yes we have a problem.

But some of the authors have shown recently that on Earth, another phenomenon could remove the HSEs from the crust, well after the formation of the core: the exsolution and segregation of iron sulfide. In other words, the bombardment could have brought more HSEs than currently recorded. And this motivates to revisite the history of the Lunar bombardment.

Simulating the bombardment

So, the observations are: the craters, and the HSEs. The craters are not only the basins, but also the smaller ones, with diameters larger than 1 km. Even smaller craters could be used, but the data are considered to be reliable, i.e. exhaustive, for craters larger than 1 km. From that size to the large basins, we can fit a function of distribution, i.e. number of craters vs. diameter. Since there is an obvious correlation between the size of a crater and the one of the impactor, a population of craters corresponds to a population of impactors.

The authors dispose of statistics of collisions, which could be seen as mass accretion, between the Moon and small bodies during the early ages of the Solar System. These statistics result from numerical simulations conducted by some of them, and they can be fine-tuned to fit the crater distribution, their estimated ages, and the abundance of highly siderophile elements. Fine-tuning the statistics consist in artificially moving the parameters of the simulation, for instance the initial number of small bodies, or the date of the instability provoking the cataclysm, in the cataclysm scenario.

Cataclysm possible, accretion tail preferred

And here is the result: if the HSEs are only due to the mass accretion after the cooling of the Lunar crust, then the observations can only be explained by the cataclysm, i.e. the LHB would be due to a late instability. This instability would have resulted in a mass accretion from comets, and this raises another problem: this accretion seems to lack of primitive, carbonaceous material, while the comets contain some.

However, if the HSEs have been removed after the cooling of the crust, then the accretion tail scenario is possible.

We should accept that for this kind of study, the solution is not unique. A way to tend to the unicity of the solution is to discuss further implications, in examining other clues. And the authors mention the tungsten.

Tungsten is another marker

Tungsten is rather a lithophile than a siderophile element, at least in the presence of iron sulfide. In other words, even if it does not dislike iron, it prefers lithium (I like this way of discussing chemistry). Something puzzling is a significant difference in the ratios of two isotopes of tungsten (182W and 184W) between the Moon and the Earth. This difference could be primordial, as brought by the projectile which is supposed to have splitted the proto-Earth into the Earth and the Moon (nickname of the projectile: Theia), or it could be due to the post-formation mass accumulation. In that case, that would be another constraint on the LHB.

Implications for Mars

The LHB has affected the whole inner Solar System. So, if a scenario is valid for the Moon, it must be valid for Mars.
This is why the authors did the job for Mars as well. A notable difference is that Mars would be less impacted by comets than the Moon, and this would affect the composition of the accreted material. More precisely, a cataclysmic LHB would be a mixture of asteroids and comets, while an accretion tail one would essentially consist of leftover planetesimals. It appears that this last scenario, i.e. the accretion tail one, can match the distribution of craters and the abundance of HSEs. However, the cataclysmic scenario would not bring enough HSEs on Mars.

Predictions

This study tells us that the accretion tail scenario is possible. The authors show that it would imply that

  1. The quantity of remaining HSEs on the Moon is correlated with the crystallization of the Lunar magma ocean, which itself regulates the age of the earliest Lunar crust.
  2. For Mars, the Noachian era would have started 200 Myr earlier than currently thought, i.e. 4.3 Gyr instead of 4.1 Gyr. That period is characterized by high rates of meteorite and asteroid impacts and the possible presence of abundant surface water. Moreover, the Borealis formation, i.e. the northern hemisphere of Mars, which seems to be a very large impact basin, should have been formed 4.37 Gyr ago.

Further studies, explorations, space missions, lab experiments,… should give us new data, which would challenge these implications and refine these scenarios. So, the wording prediction can seem weird for past phenomena, but the prediction is for new clues.

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Moon, Planets

The origin of giant impactors

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Hi there! You may know that our Solar System has had a catastrophic youth, destructive impacts playing an inescapable role in sculpting its structure. The paper I present you today, Constraints on the pre-impact orbits of Solar System giant impactors, by Alan P. Jackson, Travis S.J. Gabriel & Erik I. Asphaug, proposes an efficient way to determine the orbit of a giant impactor before the impact. This tells us where this impactor could have come from. The study has recently been published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Outline

Giant impacts in the Solar System
2 kinds of massive impacts
Why determining their origin
The impact velocity gives the orbit of the impactor
A slow impact formed the Moon
Stripping Mercury from its light elements
A giant impact on Mars
The study and its authors

Giant impacts in the Solar System

In its early history, the Solar System was composed of many small bodies, i.e. many much than now, most of them having been cleared since then. They have been cleared because the gravitational perturbation of the planets made their orbits unstable. They may also have been destroyed by collisions. Before the clearing was completed, the presence of so many bodies favored intense bombardments. You know for instance the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), which probably happened 4 Byr ago, during 200 Myr.
The violence and the outcome of an impact depend on the relative sizes of the target and the impactor, and their relative velocities. Here, the relative velocity should be seen as a vector, i.e. not only the velocity itself is important (the norm of the vector), but its orientation as well, since it directly affects the incidence angle. The craters on the surface of telluric planets, asteroids, and planetary satellites tell us about the history of the bodies, and are the signature of such bombardment. They have been excavated by impactors of moderate size. But now, imagine that the impactor has the size of a planetary body. This is what the authors address as giant impactors.
Giant impactors could have been responsible for

  • the formation of the Moon,
  • the removal of light elements on Mercury,
  • the formation of the two satellites of Mars, Phobos and Deimos,
  • the tilt of Uranus,
  • the disruption of dwarf planets, creating asteroids families,
  • the rings of Saturn,

and many more.

2 kinds of massive impacts

When two bodies of pretty similar size collide, they could

  • either be destroyed, or just one of them be destroyed,
  • survive.

The last case is known as hit-and-run. It happens when the impact is tangential, like between two billiard balls. But it is a little more complicated, of course. This last decade has seen the publication of many Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations, in which the impactor and the target are modeled as aggregates of particles. Their mutual interactions are of course considered. Such simulations permit to model the differentiated composition of the two involved bodies, i.e. heavy elements constitute the core, while lighter ones make the mantle, and to trace the outcome of the different geochimical components during and after the impact. This way, the results can be compared with our knowledge of the composition of the bodies. We can evaluate which fraction of the material of the impactor is finally reaccreted on the target, and we can also determine the consequences of hit-and-run collisions. It appears that these collisions do not leave the two bodies intact, but they may strip them from their outer layers.

Why determining their origin

It appeared from the simulations and from the observed compositions of planetary bodies, like the Earth-Moon pair, that impacts do affect the composition of the resulting bodies, and that the difference of composition between the target and the impactor may result in variations of composition after the process is completed, i.e. not only the collision, but also the coalescence of the dust cloud and the reaccretion of the debris. Determining the composition of an impacted planetary body can tell us something on the composition of the impactor.
The composition of planetary bodies depend on their location in the Solar System. The distance with the Sun affects the temperature, which itself affects the viscoelastic properties of the material. Moreover, the initial protoplanetary nebula which gave birth to the Solar System had probably a radial dependent composition, which affected the composition of the resulting planetary bodies. If we could know where an impactor came from, that would tell us something on the primordial Solar System.

The impact velocity gives the orbit of the impactor

In 2014 the first author, i.e. Alan P. Jackson, while he was in UK, lead a study in which the orbital elements of the impacted bodies were determined, in modeling the impact as an impulsive velocity kick. In the present study, the authors invert the formulae, to get the pre-impact elements from the post-impact ones, which are observed, and from the impact velocity, which is estimated by other studies.

This seems easy, but actually is not. One of the problem is that the uncertainties on the impact velocity translates into a family of possible pre-impact elements. Anyway, they give constraints on the semimajor axis, eccentricity and inclination of the impactor. Something very interesting with this method is that the inversion of analytical formulae is very fast with a computer, i.e. you can have the result in a few seconds, maybe less, while the classical method would consist to run N-body simulations during days, where you model the motions of thousands of candidate-impactors (of which you know nothing), until you observe a collision… or not.

In determining the possible pre-impact orbital elements, the authors can assess whether the impactors are likely to fall on the Sun, or to cross the orbit of another planet. In particular, a Sun-grazing solution should obviously be rejected. Moreover, the authors consider that an impactor which would have crossed the orbit of Jupiter would probably have been ejected from the Solar System. As a consequence, such a solution has only a low probability.

And now, let us have a look at the results! The authors applied their method on the formation of the Moon, of Mercury, and on the northern hemisphere of Mars.

A slow impact formed the Moon

It is widely accepted that a giant impactor, nicknamed Theia, has split the proto-Earth between the Earth and the Moon. The literature proposes us three scenarios:

  1. A canonical scenario, in which Theia is a Mars-sized object,
  2. A hit-and-run scenario, in which only part of Theia constitutes the protolunar disk,
  3. A violent scenario, which assumes that the Earth spun very fast at the time of the impact, and that the total angular momentum of the Earth-Moon system was twice the present one. This last scenario requires high impact velocities.

It appears from the results that the last of these scenarios, which requires high velocities, is much less probable than the others, because high velocities translate into highly eccentric orbits. Highly eccentric orbits are the less stable ones, in particular many of them cross the orbit of Jupiter, which could eject them from the Solar System.
So, a conclusion of this study is that the formation of the Moon probably results from a low velocity impact between the proto-Earth and Theia.

Stripping Mercury from its light elements

The composition of Mercury is intriguing, since it is anomalously dense with respect to its size. It is as if the observed Mercury would only be the core of a planet. A proposed explanation is that the proto-Mercury was composed of that core and a mantle of lighter elements (an alternative one is a depletion of lighter elements in the protoplanetary nebula in that region of the Solar System). And of course, it has been imagined that the removal of the mantle is due to a giant impact.

Two scenarios are present in the literature:

  1. A violent impact on the proto-Mercury, which would have removed the mantle,
  2. A succession of hit-and-run collisions in which the proto-Mercury would have been the impactor on the proto-Earth and / or the proto-Venus, and which would have been progressively enriched in iron.

The authors consider the multiple hit-and-run scenario as the most probable one, since it is the one involving the smallest velocities, and limits the possibility of gravitational scattering by Jupiter.

A giant impact on Mars

The North Polar Basin of Mars, or Borealis Basin, covers 40% of the surface of Mars. It may be the largest impact basin in the Solar System, and it creates a dichotomy between the northern and the southern hemispheres.

Topography of Mars, from the instrument MOLA. Borealis Basin is the large blue region in the north. © USGS
Topography of Mars, from the instrument MOLA. Borealis Basin is the large blue region in the north. © USGS

The authors stress that the exact location of Mars at the date of the impact does affect the results, in particular Earth-crossing orbits are allowed only is Mars was close to its pericentre (the location on its orbit, where it is the closest to the Sun). Anyway, they find that the impactor should have had an orbit close to the one of Mars, and suggest that its semimajor axis could have been between 1.2 and 2.2 astronomical unit (the one of Mars being 1.52 AU).

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Planets

The lowlands of Mars

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Hi there! Today I will give you the composition of the subsurface of the lowlands of Mars. This is the opportunity for me to present you The stratigraphy and history of Mars’ northern lowlands through mineralogy of impact craters: A comprehensive survey, by Lu Pan, Bethany L. Ehlmann, John Carter & Carolyn M. Ernst, which has recently been accepted for publication in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Outline

Low- and Highlands
The past ocean hypothesis
The CRISM instrument
Hydrated vs. mafic minerals
The study and the authors

Low- and Highlands

Topography of Mars. We can see lowlands in the North, and highlands in the South. © USGS
Topography of Mars. We can see lowlands in the North, and highlands in the South. © USGS

As you can see on this image, the topography of Mars can be divided into the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, the Northern one (actually about one third of the surface) being essentially constituted of plains, while the Southern one is made of mountains. The difference of elevation between these two hemispheres is between 1 to 3 km. Another difference is the fact that the Southern hemisphere is heavily cratered, even if craters exist in the lowlands. This Martian dichotomy is very difficult to explain, some explanations have been proposed, e.g., the lowlands could result from a single, giant impact, or the difference could be due to internal (tectonic) processes, which would have acted differentially, renewing the Northern hemisphere only… Anyway, whatever the cause, there is a dichotomy in the Martian topography. This study examines the lowlands.

The lowlands are separated into: Acidalia Planitia (for plain), Arcadia Planitia, Amazonis Planitia, Chryse Planitia, Isidis Planitia, Scandia Cavi (the polar region), Utopia Planitia, Vatistas Borealis,…

Plains also exist in the Southern hemisphere, like the Hellas and the Argyre Planitiae, which are probably impact basins. But this region is mostly known for Olympus Mons, which is the highest known mountain is the Solar System (altitude: 22 km), and the Tharsis Montes, which are 3 volcanoes in the Tharsis region.

To know the subsurface of a region, and its chemical composition, the easiest way is to dig… at least on Earth. On Mars, you are not supposed to affect the nature… Fortunately, the nature did the job for us, in bombarding the surface. This bombardment was particularly intense during the Noachian era, which correspond to the Late Heavy Bombardment, between 4.1 to 3.7 Gyr ago. The impacts excavated some material, that you just have to analyze with a spectrometer, provided the crater is preserved enough. This should then give you clues on the past of the region. Some say the lowlands might have supported a global ocean once.

The past ocean hypothesis

Liquid water seems to have existed at the surface of Mars, until some 3.5 Gyr ago. There are evidences of gullies and channels in the lowlands. This would have required the atmosphere of Mars to be much hotter, and probably thicker, than it is now. The hypothesis that the lowlands were entirely covered by an ocean has been proposed in 1987, and been supported by several data and studies since then, even if it is still controversial. Some features seem to be former shorelines, and evidences of two past tsunamis have been published in 2016. These evidences are channels created by former rivers, which flowed from down to the top. These tsunamis would have been the consequences of impacts, one of them being responsible for the crater Lomonosov.

The fate of this ocean is not clear. Part of it would have been evaporated in the atmosphere, and then lost in the space, part of it would have hydrated the subsurface, before freezing… This is how the study of this subsurface may participate in the debate.

The CRISM instrument

To study the chemical composition of the material excavated by the impacts, the authors used CRISM data. CRISM, for Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, is an instrument of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). MRO is a NASA spacecraft, which orbits Mars since 2006.
CRISM is an imaging spectrometer, which can observe both in the visible and in the infrared ranges, which requires a rigorous cooling of the instrument. These multi-wavelengths observations permit to identify the different chemical elements composing the surface. The CRISM team summarizes its scientific goals by follow the water. Studying the chemical composition would permit to characterize the geology of Mars, and give clues on the past presence of liquid water, on the evolution of the Martian climate,…

In this study, the authors used CRISM data of 1,045 craters larger than 1 km, in the lowlands. They particularly focused on wavelengths between 1 and 2.6μm, which is convenient to identify hydrated minerals.

Hydrated vs. mafic minerals

The authors investigated different parts of the craters: the central peak, which might be constituted of the deepest material, the wall, the floor… The CRISM images should be treated, i.e. denoised before analysis. This requires to perform a photometric, then an atmospheric correction, to remove spikes, to eliminate dead pixels…

And after this treatment, the authors identified two kinds of minerals: mafic and hydrated ones. Mafic minerals are silicate minerals, in particular olivine and pyroxenes, which are rich in magnesium and iron, while hydrated minerals contain water. They in particular found a correlation between the size of the crater and the ratio mafic / hydrated, in the sense that mafic detections are less dependent on crater size. Which means that mafic minerals seem to be ubiquitous, while the larger the crater, the likelier the detection of hydrated minerals. Since larger craters result from more violent impacts, this suggests that hydrated minerals have a deeper origin. Moreover, no hydrated material has been found in the Arcadia Planitia, despite the analysis of 85 craters. They also noticed that less degraded craters have a higher probability of mineral detection, whatever the mineral.

However, the authors did not find evidence of concentrated salt deposits, which would have supported the past ocean hypothesis.

The study and the authors

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