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Near Surface Stratigraphy and Regolith Production in Southwestern Elysium Planitia, Mars: Implications for Hesperian-Amazonian Terrains and the InSight Lander Mission

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Abstract

The presence of rocks in the ejecta of craters at the InSight landing site in southwestern Elysium Planitia indicates a strong, rock-producing unit at depth. A finer regolith above is inferred by the lack of rocks in the ejecta of 10-m-scale craters. This regolith should be penetrable by the mole of the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3). An analysis of the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of 7988 rocky ejecta craters (RECs) across four candidate landing ellipses reveals that all craters >200 m in diameter and \({<}750 \pm 30\ \mbox{Ma}\) in age have boulder-sized rocks in their ejecta. The frequency of RECs however decreases significantly below this diameter (\(D\)), represented by a roll-off in the SFD slope. At \(30\ \text{m} < D < 200\ \text{m}\), the slope of the cumulative SFD declines to near zero at \(D < 30\ \text{m}\). Surface modification, resolution limits, or human counting error cannot account for the magnitude of this roll-off. Rather, a significant population of <200 m diameter fresh non-rocky ejecta craters (NRECs) here indicates the presence of a relatively fine-grained regolith that prevents smaller craters from excavating the strong rock-producing unit. Depth to excavation relationships and the REC size thresholds indicate the region is capped by a regolith that is almost everywhere 3 m thick but may be as thick as 12 to 18 m. The lower bound of the thickness range is independently confirmed by the depth to the inner crater in concentric or nested craters. The data indicate that 85% of the InSight landing region is covered by a regolith that is at least 3 m thick. The probability of encountering rockier material at depths >3 m by the HP3 however increases significantly due to the increase in boulder-size rocks in the lower regolith column, near the interface of the bedrock.

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Acknowledgements

Research described in this paper was partially done by the InSight Project, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Warner was partially funded through the NASA Postdoctoral Program. We thank JPL interns Colin Bloom, Nate Wigton, Deborah Hernandez, Valerie Carranza, Katherine Smyth, Soumya Kannan, Caitlin Broznak, and Jeff Green with their help on this project. We also thank SUNY Geneseo student Anthony Pivarunas for his help. We are especially grateful to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE (University of Arizona) and CTX (Malin Space Science Systems) imaging teams for their high-quality data and hard work in acquiring InSight imagery. We thank comments from members of the InSight science team and C. Fassett and T. Platz for constructive reviews. This paper constitutes InSight Contribution Number 24.

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, State University of New York at Geneseo, 1 College Circle, Geneseo, NY, USA

    N. H. Warner & J. Sweeney

  2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    M. P. Golombek & C. Schwartz

  3. Astrogeology Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    R. Fergason & R. Kirk

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Warner, N.H., Golombek, M.P., Sweeney, J. et al. Near Surface Stratigraphy and Regolith Production in Southwestern Elysium Planitia, Mars: Implications for Hesperian-Amazonian Terrains and the InSight Lander Mission. Space Sci Rev 211, 147–190 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-017-0352-x

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