The CRISM mission has been gathering data at Mars for only a few months, and already scientists are working hard to interpret what is being sent back.
Shannon Pelkey, from Brown University, has been involved with the mission since 2003. Since CRISM began it’s first sceince orbit in November, she has been copmaring data with other images from Omega, a spectrometer onboard ESA’s Mars Express.
The spectra being returned are offering more insight into the ancient crust of the red planet. Pelkey saw that in two different exposed areas of Mars – a deep eroded area in the Northern hempsiphere, and a shallow impact crater in the southern highlands – deep down clay from the most ancient era of Mars’s history has been exposed.
Clay is a marker for water – because it can only form when water is there, and it seems to always show up in the most ancient material on the planet, Pelkey says. Above the clay, she saw another mineral – olivine. But as yet the data can’t be used to say whether this pattern is ubiquitous on the planet. On some central peaks the same features can’t be seen, for example.
Luckily, CRISM is only a few months into its nominal 2 year science mission. Pelkey anticipates some serious quantities of data to start flowing soon, and with it some significant evidence for the climate history of Mars. We await the results with eager anticipation.
Leave a Reply