Search Publications
Annual survey of water vapor vertical distribution and water-aerosol coupling in the martian atmosphere observed by SPICAM/MEx solar occultations
Forget, F.; Maltagliati, L.; Montmessin, F. +5 more
The vertical distribution of water vapor is a very important diagnostic to determine the physical and chemical processes that drive the martian water cycle. Yet, very few direct measurements have been performed so far, and our knowledge of the H2O vertical distribution on Mars relies on General Circulation Models (GCMs). The study prese…
Crater-based dating of geological units on Mars: Methods and application for the new global geological map
Tanaka, Kenneth L.; Platz, Thomas; Michael, Gregory +2 more
The new, post-Viking generation of Mars orbital imaging and topographical data provide significant higher-resolution details of surface morphologies, which induced a new effort to photo-geologically map the surface of Mars at 1:20,000,000 scale. Although from unit superposition relations a relative stratigraphical framework can be compiled, it was…
Reflectance spectra diversity of silica-rich materials: Sensitivity to environment and implications for detections on Mars
Bell, J. F.; Rice, M. S.; Horgan, B. H. +7 more
Hydrated silica-rich materials have recently been discovered on the surface of Mars by the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Spirit, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), and the Mars Express Observatoire pour la Minéralogie, l’Eau, les Glaces, et l’Activité (OMEGA) in several locations. Hav…
An observational study of the response of the upper atmosphere of Mars to lower atmospheric dust storms
Withers, Paul; Pratt, R.
The effects of dust storms on densities, temperatures, and winds in the lower atmosphere of Mars are substantial. Here we use upper atmospheric observations to investigate how dust storms affect the upper atmosphere of Mars. We use aerobraking accelerometer, ultraviolet stellar occultation, and radio occultation datasets to examine the magnitudes …
A complete climatology of the aerosol vertical distribution on Mars from MEx/SPICAM UV solar occultations
Montmessin, Franck; Bertaux, Jean-Loup; Maltagliati, Luca +4 more
We present the first results on solar occultations performed with the UV channel of SPICAM, on board Mars Express. From the dataset of over 900 occultations (performed between April 2004 and October 2011), about 640 atmospheric profiles of the martian atmosphere were derived. This dataset, spanning four martian years, allows characterization of th…
NeMars: An empirical model of the martian dayside ionosphere based on Mars Express MARSIS data
Sánchez-Cano, B.; Witasse, O.; Radicella, S. M. +2 more
Several models of the martian ionosphere have been developed in the last years. In this paper, a new empirical model for the dayside electron density of the martian ionosphere (primary and secondary layer), called NeMars, is described. The model is mainly based on MARSIS AIS data (Active Ionospheric Sounding from the Mars Advanced Radar and Ionosp…
Mars ionosphere total electron content analysis from MARSIS subsurface data
Amata, E.; Orosei, R.; Picardi, G. +6 more
We describe a method to estimate the total electron content (TEC) of the Mars ionosphere from the output parameters of an algorithm, called the Contrast Method (Picardi, G., Sorge, S. [2000]. Proc. SPIE. Eighth International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar, vol. 4084, pp. 624-629; Ilyushin, Ya.A., Kunitsyn, V.E. [2004]. J. Commun. Technol. …
Multiple working hypotheses for the formation of compositional stratigraphy on Mars: Insights from the Mawrth Vallis region
Baldridge, A. M.; Michalski, Joseph R.; Cuadros, J. +1 more
A unique aspect of martian geology is the presence of similar compositional stratigraphy observed in many locations throughout the surface. Where the Al-rich and Fe/Mg-rich clay minerals occur together, aluminous clays typically overly layered ferromagnesian clays, possibly indicating that precipitation-driven leaching occurred in a warmer, wetter…
Dications and thermal ions in planetary atmospheric escape
Simon Wedlund, C.; Ehrenreich, D.; Witasse, O. +4 more
In the recent years, the presence of dications in the atmospheres of Mars, Venus, Earth and Titan has been modeled and assessed. These studies also suggested that these ions could participate to the escape of the planetary atmospheres because a large fraction of them is unstable and highly energetic. When they dissociate, their internal energy is …
Knob fields in the Terra Cimmeria/Terra Sirenum region of Mars: Stratigraphy, mineralogy and morphology
Neukum, Gerhard; Bishop, Janice L.; Wendt, Lorenz
We investigate the stratigraphy, morphology and mineralogy of five major knob fields in the region between Terra Cimmeria and Terra Sirenum on Mars based on HRSC, CTX, MOC and HiRISE imagery together with hyperspectral data from CRISM. The knob fields comprise Ariadnes Colles, Atlantis Chaos and Gorgonum Chaos and further, unnamed fields of mounds…