Sequence of infilling events in Gale Crater, Mars: Results from morphology, stratigraphy, and mineralogy

By Laetitia Le Deit, Ernst Hauber, Frank Fueten, M. Pondrelli, Angelo Pio Rossi, Ralf Jaumann. 2013

180 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Gale Crater is filled by sedimentary deposits including a mound of layered deposits, Aeolis Mons. Using orbital data, we mapped the crater infillings and measured their geometry to determine their origin. The sediment of Aeolis Mons is interpreted to be primarily air fall material such as dust, volcanic ash, fine‐grained impact products, and possibly snow deposited by settling from the atmosphere, as well as wind‐blown sands cemented in the crater center. Unconformity surfaces between the geological units are evidence for depositional hiatuses. Crater floor material deposited around Aeolis Mons and on the crater wall is interpreted to be alluvial and colluvial deposits. Morphologic evidence suggests that a shallow lake existed after the formation of the lowermost part of Aeolis Mons (the Small yardangs unit and the mass‐wasting deposits). A suite of several features including patterned ground and possible rock glaciers are suggestive of periglacial processes with a permafrost environment after the first hundreds of thousands of years following its formation, dated to ~3.61 Ga, in the Late Noachian/Early Hesperian. Episodic melting of snow in the crater could have caused the formation of sulfates and clays in Aeolis Mons, the formation of rock glaciers and the incision of deep canyons and valleys along its flanks as well as on the crater wall and rim, and the formation of a lake in the deepest portions of Gale.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2caf95d1519368b57f37d9d81cd44f0ea2b7922b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

The High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) of Mars Express and its approach to science analysis and mapping for Mars and its satellites (2016, methodology): “For example, Le Deit et al. (2013) used the HRSC multi-orbit DTM and orthoimages of Gale Crater, the landing site of MSL, to analyze slopes and to count craters for absolute model age determinations.”
Ancient Martian aeolian processes and palaeomorphology reconstructed from the Stimson formation on the lower slope of Aeolis Mons, Gale crater, Mars (2018, background): “Crater counts suggest that Gale crater formed at approximately 3.8 to 3.6 Ga (Thomson et al., 2011; Le Deit et al., 2013) – a time that is considered to be the transition between the Noachian and Hesperian epochs (Tanaka et al., 2014) – and that the crater-filling strata were deposited over a 200…”