Mars

Properties Of The Nili Fossae Olivine-clay-carbonate lithology: Orbital And In Situ At Séítah

By Keith Cowing
astro-ph.EP
June 29, 2022
Filed under
Properties Of The Nili Fossae Olivine-clay-carbonate lithology: Orbital And In Situ At Séítah
a.) HiRISE overview map of the Séítah traverse showing the three key workspaces: Bastide, Brac, and Issole, and the Sol counts at each. b.) Navcam image of Bastide Workspace taken on Sol 204. c.) Navcam image of Brac Workspace on Sol 248, before samples were taken NLF_0248_0688961170_442ECM_N0080000NCAM02248_07_195J d.) Mastcam-Z image of Issole on Sol 333 after Robine and Pauls samples and Quartier abrasion were taken but before sample Malay was obtained, QZCAM_SOL0333_ZCAM08355_L0_Z110_ISSOLE_WORKSPACE_VP_4X_E01.

We examine the observed properties of the Nili Fossae olivine-clay-carbonate lithology from orbital data and in situ by the Mars 2020 rover at the Séítah unit in Jezero crater, including: 1) composition (Liu, 2022) 2) grain size (Tice, 2022) 3) inferred viscosity (calculated based on geochemistry collected by SuperCam (Wiens, 2022)).

Based on the low viscosity and distribution of the unit we postulate a flood lava origin for the olivine-clay-carbonate at Séítah. We include a new CRISM map of the clay 2.38 {\mu}m band and use in situ data to show that the clay in the olivine cumulate in the Séítah formation is consistent with talc or serpentine from Mars 2020 SuperCam LIBS and VISIR and MastCam-Z observations. We discuss two intertwining aspects of the history of the lithology: 1) the emplacement and properties of the cumulate layer within a lava lake, based on terrestrial analogs in the Pilbara, Western Australia, and using previously published models of flood lavas and lava lakes, and 2) the limited extent of post emplacement alteration, including clay and carbonate alteration (Clave, 2022; Mandon, 2022).

Adrian J. Brown, Linda Kah, Lucia Mandon, Roger Wiens, Patrick Pinet, Elise Clavé, Stéphane Le Mouélic, Arya Udry, Patrick J. Gasda, Clément Royer, Keyron Hickman-Lewis11, Agnes Cousin, Justin I. Simon, Jade Comellas14, Edward Cloutis, Thierry Fouchet, Alberto G. Fairén, Stephanie Connell, David Flannery, Briony Horgan, Lisa Mayhew, Allan Treiman, Jorge I. Núñez, Brittan Wogsland, Karim Benzerara, Hans E.F. Amundsen, Cathy Quantin-Nataf, Kevin P. Hand, Vinciane Debaille, Ari Essunfeld, Pierre Beck, Nicholas J. Tosca, Juan M. Madariaga, Eleni Ravanis

Comments: 34 pages, 15 figures
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Geophysics (physics.geo-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2206.13380 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2206.13380v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Adrian Brown
[v1] Mon, 27 Jun 2022 15:41:46 UTC (3,700 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13380
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻