Impact craters are the dominant long-term sink for windblown sediments on mars. They contain an abundance of modern eolian features (e.g., ripples, drifts, transverse aeolian ridges, sand sheets,…

This federal contract award to Texas A&M University, a public land-grant research university in College Station, Texas, supports research to develop a process-based facies model for eolian deposits in Martian impact craters. The award, valued at $632,468.00, was granted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the Mars Data Analysis Program. The research aims to characterize the topographic structure and wind flow fields of modern eolian dune fields within Martian crater basins, in order to create a facies model to better interpret ancient eolian rock records and support future Mars exploration missions. This grant does not have a set-aside designation. Texas A&M University, as a highly capable research institution, has a long history of providing scientific expertise and technical support to federal agencies like NASA through both contract and grant awards.

Impact craters are the dominant long-term sink for windblown sediments on mars. They contain an abundance of modern eolian features (e.g., ripples, drifts, transverse aeolian ridges, sand sheets, and sand dunes), and the sedimentary rock record indicates that eolian sediments have been depositing in crater basins since at least the early hesperian. Building evidence supports that eolian sediments constitute a significant fraction of mars sedimentary record and are key indicators of ancient martian climate. However, because impact craters are relatively rare on earth, stratigraphic models to describe eolian depositional facies in impact basins have not yet been developed and interpretations of ancient martian eolian stratigraphy are based on terrestrial facies models. Furthermore, crater topography exerts a strong control on martian wind patterns that likely influence the distribution and geometry of the martian eolian deposits that become part of the rock record. There is thus a need to build a new model for eolian accumulation and preservation in impact craters, constrained by observations of modern intracrater eolian systems on mars. In this study, we will develop a facies model of crater basin dune fields that answers fundamental questions about how the martian eolian rock record develops and how unique boundary conditions, such as basin type and martian atmospheric conditions could bias the martian rock record differently from earth. Such a facies model will guide future investigations of ancient eolian environments and produce new tools to decipher mars surface environments and habitability over most of the planet s history. The overarching goal of this proposal is to create a process-based eolian facies model of crater-basin eolian deposits. In order to accomplish this goal, we will (1) determine the topographic structure of modern eolian dune fields in crater basins and of the crater basins themselves. (2) characterize wind flow fields across a range of spatial scales and crater basin geometries that contain eolian dune fields. (3) create facies models for eolian deposits using dune topographic structure, flow fields, and kinematic stratification models. To complete these objectives, we will use dune field and crater data from the mars global digital dune database (MGD3) along with hirise images, hirise elevation models, CTX and mola topography data, along with global and meso-scale atmospheric models. Using hirise digital terrain models, we will segment dunes and extract dune height, width, length, volume, 2D and 3D surface area, slipface orientation, wavelength, and crestline length, sinuosity and orientation. We will use existing global atmospheric models and a simplified katabatic wind model with mola topography data to characterize crater basin flow fields. From the models, we will identify slope-driven wind directions and intensities, zones of wind convergence and of eolian sediment accumulation, and preservation potential. Integrating these methods, we will develop a process-based facies model that will guide interpretations of ancient eolian rocks and provide better predictability of the type and location of eolian deposits in jezero crater and other future landing sites. Our proposed work is relevant to the mars data analysis program because we are using products from the mars reconnaissance orbiter and mars global surveyor to assess the origins of long term eolian accumulations in crater basins. These results support mepag goal III understand the origin and evolution of mars as a geologic system by identifying and characterizing past and present processes relevant to the crust and identifying and characterizing processes that are actively shaping the present-day surface of mars . The result of this study will support current and future mars missions by providing new knowledge on eolian systems for the science team to make decisions about path planning, targeting, and sample selection.