Mars

Mawrth Vallis, Mars: A Fascinating Place For Future In Situ Exploration

By Keith Cowing
Status Report
astro-ph.EP
November 26, 2024
Filed under , , , , , , , , ,
Mawrth Vallis, Mars: A Fascinating Place For Future In Situ Exploration
The Mawrth Vallis region with the proposed landing site areas over (left) MOLA altimetry superposed on the THEMIS (Thermal Emission Imaging System) daytime IR mosaic and (right) HRSC (High Resolution Stereo Camera) color and nadir mosaic. The ellipse envelopes are drawn in white for Mars2020 (12 km x 10 km) and red for ExoMars. The ellipses (120 km x 19 km) for ExoMars Launch Program Opening and Closing (LPO and LPC respectively) are in yellow. — astro-ph.EP

After the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory rover, both NASA and ESA initiated a selection process for potential landing sites for the Mars2020 and ExoMars missions, respectively.

Two ellipses located in the Mawrth Vallis region were proposed and evaluated during a series of meetings (3 for Mars2020 mission and 5 for ExoMars).

We describe here the regional context of the two proposed ellipses as well as the framework of the objectives of these two missions. Key science targets of the ellipses and their astrobiological interests are reported.

This work confirms the proposed ellipses contain multiple past Martian wet environments of subaerial, subsurface and/or subaqueous character, in which to probe the past climate of Mars, build a broad picture of possible past habitable environments, evaluate their exobiological potentials and search for biosignatures in well-preserved rocks.

A mission scenario covering several key investigations during the nominal mission of each rover is also presented, as well as descriptions of how the site fulfills the science requirements and expectations of in situ martian exploration.

These serve as a basis for potential future exploration of the Mawrth Vallis region with new missions and describe opportunities for human exploration of Mars in terms of resources and science discoveries.

François Poulet, Christoph Gross, Briony Horgan, Damien Loizeau, Janice L. Bishop, John Carter, Csilla Orgel

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2101.12479 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:2101.12479v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2101.12479
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Journal reference: Astrobiology volume 20 Issue 2, January 31, 2020
Related DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1089/ast.2019.2074
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Submission history
From: Damien Loizeau
[v1] Fri, 29 Jan 2021 09:08:18 UTC (4,647 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.12479
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) 🖖🏻