The Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) is a NASA-funded analog mission program to test flight-candidate instrumentation on icy-ocean world analog sites. In September 2017, an SIIOS experiment was deployed on Gulkana Glacier. The instrumentation included a Nanometrics Trillium 120 s Posthole seismometer, four Nanometrics Trillium Compact (TC) seismometers, four Mark Products L28 geophones, and five each of Silicon Audio (SiA) 203P-15 and 203P-60 seismometers. The SiA sensors served as our flight-candidate instruments. The instrumentation was arranged in a small (<2 m) aperture array with most sensors deployed in the ice. We also placed five of the SiA seismometers on top of a mock lander to simulate placement on a lander deck. The instrumentation recorded an active-source experiment immediately after deployment and then passively for 13 days. We conducted an active-source experiment using a sledgehammer striking an aluminum plate at 13 locations, with 9–13 shots occurring at each location. During the passive observation, the experiment recorded one large Mw 7.1 event that occurred in Mexico and four other teleseismic events with Mw>6.0. The active- and passive-source signals are being used to constrain the local glacial hydrological structure, environmental seismicity, to develop algorithms to detect and locate seismic sources, and to quantify the similarities and differences in science capabilities between sensors. Initial results indicate the flight-candidate instrumentation performs comparably to the Trillium Posthole up to periods of 3 s, after which the flight-candidate performs more comparably to the TCs.
In anticipation of future spacecraft missions to icy ocean worlds, the Seismometer to Investigate Ice and Ocean Structure (SIIOS) was funded by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to prepare for seismologic investigations of these worlds. During the summer of 2018, the SIIOS team deployed a seismic experiment on the Greenland ice sheet situated, approximately, 80 km north of Qaanaaq, Greenland. The seismometers deployed included one Trillium 120 s Posthole (TPH) broadband seismometer, 13 Silicon Audio flight-candidate seismometers, and five Sercel L28 4.5 Hz geophones. Seismometers were buried 1 m deep in the firn in a cross-shaped array centered on a collocated TPH and Silicon Audio instrument. One part of the array consisted of Silicon Audio and Sercel geophones situated 1 m from the center of the array in the ordinal directions. A second set of four Silicon Audio instruments was situated 1 km from the center of the array in the cardinal directions. A mock-lander spacecraft was placed at the array center and instrumented with four Silicon Audio seismometers. We performed an active-source experiment and a passive-listening experiment that lasted for, approximately, 12 days. The active–source experiment consisted of 9–12 sledgehammer strikes to an aluminum plate at 10 separate locations up to 100 m from the array center. The passive experiment recorded the ice-sheet ambient background noise, as well as local and regional events. Both datasets will be used to quantify differences in spacecraft instrumentation deployment strategies, and for evaluating science capabilities for single-station and small-aperture seismic arrays in future geophysical missions. Our initial results indicate that the flight-candidate seismometer performs comparably to the TPH at frequencies above 0.1 Hz and that instruments coupled to the mock-lander perform comparably to ground-based instrumentation in the frequency band of 0.1–10 Hz. For future icy ocean world missions, a deck-coupled seismometer would perform similarly to a ground-based deployment across the most frequency bands.
Abstract. In this study, we report the results of an active-source seismology and ground-penetrating radar survey performed in northwestern Greenland at a site where the presence of a subglacial lake beneath the accumulation area has previously been proposed. Both seismic and radar results show a flat reflector approximately 830–845 m below the surface, with a seismic reflection coefficient of −0.43 ± 0.17, which is consistent with the acoustic impedance contrast between a layer of water and glacial ice. Additionally, in the seismic data we observe an intermittent lake bottom reflection arriving between 14–20 ms after the lake top reflection, corresponding to a lake depth of approximately 10–15 m. A strong coda following the lake top and lake bottom reflections is consistent with a package of lake bottom sediments although its thickness and material properties are uncertain. Finally, we use these results to conduct a first-order assessment of the lake origins using a one-dimensional thermal model and hydropotential modeling based on published surface and bed topography. Using these analyses, we narrow the lake origin hypotheses to either anomalously high geothermal flux or hypersalinity due to local ancient evaporite. Because the origins are still unclear, this site provides an intriguing opportunity for the first in situ sampling of a subglacial lake in Greenland, which could better constrain mechanisms of subglacial lake formation, evolution, and relative importance to glacial hydrology.
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