The Complex Exhumation History of Jezero Crater Floor Unit and Its Implication for Mars Sample Return

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

  • C. Quantin-Nataf
  • S. Alwmark
  • F. J. Calef
  • J. Lasue
  • K. M. Stack
  • V. Sun
  • N. R. Williams
  • E. Dehouck
  • L. Mandon
  • N. Mangold
  • O. Beyssac
  • E. Clave
  • S. H.G. Walter
  • J. I. Simon
  • A. M. Annex
  • B. Horgan
  • James W. Rice
  • D. Shuster
  • B. Cohen
  • L. Kah
  • Steven Sholes
  • B. P. Weiss
During the first year of NASA's Mars 2020 mission, Perseverance rover has investigated the dark crater floor unit of Jezero crater and four samples of this unit have been collected. The focus of this paper is to assess the potential of these samples to calibrate the crater-based Martian chronology. We first review the previous estimation of crater-based model age of this unit. Then, we investigate the impact crater density distribution across the floor unit. It reveals that the crater density is heterogeneous from areas which have been exposed to the bombardment during the last 3 Ga to areas very recently exposed to bombardment. It suggests a complex history of exposure to impact cratering. We also display evidence of several remnants of deposits on the top of the dark floor unit across Jezero below which the dark floor unit may have been buried. We propose the following scenario of burying/exhumation: the dark floor unit would have been initially buried below a unit that was a few tens of meters thick. This unit then gradually eroded away due to Aeolian processes from the northeast to the west, resulting in uneven exposure to impact bombardment over 3 Ga. A cratering model reproducing this scenario confirms the feasibility of this hypothesis. Due to the complexity of its exposure history, the Jezero dark crater floor unit will require additional detailed analysis to understand how the Mars 2020 mission samples of the crater floor can be used to inform the Martian cratering chronology.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Artikelnummere2022JE007628
TidsskriftJournal of Geophysical Research: Planets
Vol/bind128
Udgave nummer6
Antal sider16
ISSN2169-9097
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
CQN, ED, JL, LM, NM are supported by the French space agency (CNES). SA acknowledges financial support from the Swedish Research Council (Grant 2017‐06388). KK was supported by the Carlsberg foundation Grant CF19‐0023. BH is funded by NASA's Mars 2020 Project via a subcontract from the California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory to Arizona State University (subcontract 1511125). JS, BC, and DS are supported by the Mars 2020 Returned Sample Science Participating Scientist Program. SW was supported by BMWK. We thank the reviewers, especially Nicholas Warner for his comments, which greatly helped to improve the manuscript.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.

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