Sharad, the shallow radar instrument on the mars reconnaissance orbiter MRO, provides the first large volumes of closely sampled subsurface sounding data for a body other than the earth. While three…

This federal contract award to Planetary Science Institute (PSI), a non-profit research organization based in Tucson, Arizona, is for the ADVANCED 3-D SUBSURFACE IMAGING AND ANALYSIS OF PLANUM BOREUM WITH SHARAD DATA project. The $385,037.78 grant was awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to conduct research and analysis using data from the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The objective is to create an enhanced 3D SHARAD volume and use it to map new details of the internal structure and stratigraphy of the North Polar Layered Deposits (NPLD) on Mars, as well as the underlying geologic units and surrounding circumpolar deposits. This work builds upon a previous NASA-funded project that successfully applied 3D subsurface imaging techniques to SHARAD data. The contract does not have a set-aside designation, reflecting PSI's competitive capabilities in planetary science research.

Sharad, the shallow radar instrument on the mars reconnaissance orbiter MRO, provides the first large volumes of closely sampled subsurface sounding data for a body other than the earth. While three dimensional 3D subsurface sounding is performed routinely at the earths surface for industrial and scientific purposes using both radar and seismic techniques, orbit based observations of this type remain rare. In fact, there is no terrestrial data set with the geographic extent and coverage that sharad has obtained for both polar regions of mars. Moreover, the coverage density of polar observations lends itself to the use of 3D subsurface imaging techniques, which are best developed in the petroleum exploration industry. Mars polar science is now benefiting from the successful application of this imaging process to sharad data by members of our proposal team in the preceding mdap project grant NNX10AQ32G. In that study, we used sharad observations of planum boreum on 1579 MRO orbit passes to create a first fully imaged 3D sharad volume, which has made primary subsurface structures within the north polar layered deposits npld plainly visible and has revealed other features, including previously obfuscated sub trough structures and buried impact craters. Our objective for the work proposed here is to create an enhanced 3D sharad volume and use IT to map new details of the internal structure and stratigraphy of the npld, underlying geologic units, and surrounding circumpolar deposits.