Understanding the Martian Landscape

 

A team of scientists from across Europe, Asia, and the United States were awarded a 3-year, $309,000 NASA grant to explain the hydration processes of Martian regolith, or soil, at decimeter depths and continental spatial scales. Leading the project is Louisiana State University’s assistant professor in geology and geophysics Dr. Suniti Karunatillake.

“From this project, we’re hoping to gain a better understanding of some of the missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle to show how Mars has evolved since its origin,” explained Karunatillake. “We know (our research) won’t be a complete answer to the story. We are only going to be filling in a few of the missing pieces (involving Martians soil), but it will help future scientists to finish writing the story of Mars.”

Karunatillake, a planetary geoscientist, and two of his current team members previously served on the 2001: Mars Odyssey science team, a mission eponymous with Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. They worked with the Gamma Ray Spectrometer suite, which can provide the scientists with chemical data from about one-and-a-half feet deep into the Martian landscape. That delivers unprecedented compositional insight into the soil. The scientists will be studying the soils of the landscape at regional scales equivalent to the size of Earth’s own continents.

The team has already used GRS data across two published pilot projects, demonstrating that iron-sulfates may cause regolith hydration, meaning Karunatillake and his team could potentially discover varying forms of minerals carrying H2O within the soil.

Having drawn inspiration from Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction novels and Dr. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos documentaries as a child, this project marks a new direction in Karunatillake’s personal journey to discover life beyond Earth.

“I was inspired as a child by science fiction to look for other life, and with this particular research, looking at what drives how much H2O is present in Martian soil can indirectly show how life might exist on the planet and what areas may be habitable — or may have been habitable before,” Karunatillake said.