0000000000178797
AUTHOR
Ryan C. Sullivan
Overview of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover Mission to Gusev Crater: Landing site to Backstay Rock in the Columbia Hills
Spirit landed on the floor of Gusev Crater and conducted initial operations on soil covered, rock-strewn cratered plains underlain by olivine-bearing basalts. Plains surface rocks are covered by wind-blown dust and show evidence for surface enrichment of soluble species as vein and void-filling materials and coatings. The surface enrichment is the result of a minor amount of transport and deposition by aqueous processes. Layered granular deposits were discovered in the Columbia Hills, with outcrops that tend to dip conformably with the topography. The granular rocks are interpreted to be volcanic ash and/or impact ejecta deposits that have been modified by aqueous fluids during and/or after…
The Opportunity Rover's Athena Science Investigation at Meridiani Planum, Mars
The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has investigated the landing site in Eagle crater and the nearby plains within Meridiani Planum. The soils consist of fine-grained basaltic sand and a surface lag of hematite-rich spherules, spherule fragments, and other granules. Wind ripples are common. Underlying the thin soil layer, and exposed within small impact craters and troughs, are flat-lying sedimentary rocks. These rocks are finely laminated, are rich in sulfur, and contain abundant sulfate salts. Small-scale cross-lamination in some locations provides evidence for deposition in flowing liquid water. We interpret the rocks to be a mixture of chemical and siliciclastic sediments formed by e…
The Spirit Rover's Athena science investigation at Gusev Crater, Mars.
The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and its Athena science payload have been used to investigate a landing site in Gusev crater. Gusev is hypothesized to be the site of a former lake, but no clear evidence for lacustrine sedimentation has been found to date. Instead, the dominant lithology is basalt, and the dominant geologic processes are impact events and eolian transport. Many rocks exhibit coatings and other characteristics that may be evidence for minor aqueous alteration. Any lacustrine sediments that may exist at this location within Gusev apparently have been buried by lavas that have undergone subsequent impact disruption.
A comprehensive characterization of ice nucleation by three different types of cellulose particles immersed in water: lessons learned and future research directions
We present the laboratory results of immersion freezing efficiencies of cellulose particles at supercooled temperature (T) conditions. Three types of chemically homogeneous cellulose samples are used as surrogates that represent supermicron and submicron ice nucleating plant structural polymers. These samples include micro-crystalline cellulose (MCC), fibrous cellulose (FC) and nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC). Our experimental data show that particles resembling the MCC lab particle occur also in the atmosphere. Our immersion freezing dataset includes data from various ice nucleation measurement techniques available at seventeen different institutions, including nine dry dispersion and ele…
Soils of Eagle crater and Meridiani Planum at the Opportunity Rover landing site.
The soils at the Opportunity site are fine-grained basaltic sands mixed with dust and sulfate-rich outcrop debris. Hematite is concentrated in spherules eroded from the strata. Ongoing saltation exhumes the spherules and their fragments, concentrating them at the surface. Spherules emerge from soils coated, perhaps from subsurface cementation, by salts. Two types of vesicular clasts may represent basaltic sand sources. Eolian ripples, armored by well-sorted hematite-rich grains, pervade Meridiani Planum. The thickness of the soil on the plain is estimated to be about a meter. The flatness and thin cover suggest that the plain may represent the original sedimentary surface.
Irreversible loss of ice nucleation active sites in mineral dust particles caused by sulphuric acid condensation
Abstract. During the FROST-2 (FReezing Of duST) measurement campaign conducted at the Leipzig Aerosol Cloud Interaction Simulator (LACIS), we investigated changes in the ice nucleation properties of 300 nm Arizona Test Dust mineral particles following thermochemical processing by varying amounts and combinations of exposure to sulphuric acid vapour, ammonia gas, water vapour, and heat. The processed particles' heterogeneous ice nucleation properties were determined in both the water subsaturated and supersaturated humidity regimes at −30 °C and −25 °C using Colorado State University's continuous flow diffusion chamber. The amount of sulphuric acid coating material was estimated by an aeroso…
Corrigendum to "Experimental study of the role of physicochemical surface processing on the IN ability of mineral dust particles" published in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 11131–11144, 2011
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 11 (22)