Lava filling of Gale crater from Tyrrhenus Mons on Mars

Gasparri, D.; Leone, Giovanni; Cataldo, V.; Punjabi, Venkat; Nandakumar, Sangeetha

doi:10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2019.106743

“…The geochemistry of the crater infill is of volcanic origin, despite the wide and inappropriate use of the term sedimentary that mainly recalls deposition in water in the mind of a geologist. It is now clearly evident that Gale crater was filled by lava coming from Tyrrhenus Mons (Gasparri et al, 2019). Nothing different than something already observed at Gusev (McSween, Wyatt, et al, 2006;McSween, Ruff, 2006), Palos (Leverington, 2006), or elsewhere on Mars (Leone, 2016).…”

Section: Arguments In Favor Of Lavamentioning

confidence: 82%

The absence of an ocean and the fate of water all over the Martian history

Leone

¹

2019

Preprint

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Existing data returned in >40 years of planetary missions to Mars provided a good basis to understand that an ocean never existed on the surface of the planet during its whole history. The presence of environmental indicators like unaltered jarosite and olivine deposited by the early volcanic activity can be seen as evidence that liquid water was never abundant nor widespread on the surface of Mars since the pre-Noachian or Noachian at least. There is a dramatic mismatch with the water equivalent volume of the outflow channels sources with the volume needed to form an ocean. The ubiquitous presence of large volcanoes, with their huge lava fields exactly where liquid water was claimed to be abundant during the Noachian age, makes now very clear that lava and not water was involved in the formation of the outflow channels and the fluvial networks. As a consequence, cheaper robotic exploration might be favored with respect to the ambitious human exploration program planned for Mars. Unless enough water supplies will be brought to the equatorial regions from the poles through long pipelines, or from nearby asteroids through cargo ships, it will be very difficult to exploit the rich equatorial resources brought up from the mantle by the massive volcanism that characterized the early history of the planet. Digging deeply the equatorial regions searching for water would be too expensive, of uncertain reward, and thus unpractical.

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“…The geochemistry of the crater infill is of volcanic origin, despite the wide and inappropriate use of the term sedimentary that mainly recalls deposition in water in the mind of a geologist. It is now clearly evident that Gale crater was filled by lava coming from Tyrrhenus Mons (Gasparri et al, 2019). Nothing different than something already observed at Gusev (McSween, Wyatt, et al, 2006; McSween, Ruff, 2006), Palos (Leverington, 2006), or elsewhere on Mars (Leone, 2016).…”

Section: Arguments In Favor Of Lavamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The findings of Pathfinder at the debouchment of Ares Vallis (Foley et al, 2003; Rieder et al, 1997), on the other side of Chryse Planitia far away from the landing site of Viking 1, of Spirit at Gusev crater (McSween, Wyatt, et al, 2006; McSween, Ruff, et al, 2006), of Opportunity at Sinus Meridiani (Arvidson et al, 2006), and of Curiosity at Gale crater (Payré et al, 2017), revealed andesitic and basaltic compositions or presence of specific minerals like tridymite (Morris et al, 2016) more consistent with volcanic (Sautter et al, 2015, 2016) rather than aqueous activity, even if thought to be transported there by putative fluvial processes (Le Deit et al, 2013). In reality, Gale crater revealed to be just another lava‐filled crater (Gasparri et al, 2019) like Gusev crater (Greeley et al, 2005; McSween, Ruff, et al, 2006) or Palos crater (Leverington, 2006). The centimeter scale of the observed structures in the so‐called sedimentary material, including conglomerates (Mangold et al, 2016) or mudcracks found at Gale (Stein et al, 2018), is too small to justify 154 km of crater filled with water.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Absence of an Ocean and the Fate of Water all Over the Martian History

Leone

¹

2020

Earth and Space Science

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Existing data returned in >40 years of planetary missions to Mars provided a good basis to understand that an ocean never existed on the surface of the planet during its whole history. The presence of environmental indicators like unaltered jarosite and olivine deposited by the early volcanic activity can be seen as evidence that liquid water was never abundant nor widespread on the surface of Mars since the pre-Noachian or Noachian at least. There is a dramatic mismatch with the water equivalent volume of the outflow channels sources with the volume needed to form an ocean. The ubiquitous presence of large volcanoes, with their huge lava fields exactly where liquid water was claimed to be abundant during the Noachian age, makes now very clear that lava and not water was involved in the formation of the outflow channels and the fluvial networks. As a consequence, cheaper robotic exploration might be favored with respect to the ambitious human exploration program planned for Mars. Unless enough water supplies will be brought to the equatorial regions from the poles through long pipelines, or from nearby asteroids through cargo ships, it will be very difficult to exploit the rich equatorial resources brought up from the mantle by the massive volcanism that characterized the early history of the planet. Digging deeply the equatorial regions searching for water would be too expensive, of uncertain reward, and thus unpractical. et al., 1997), on the other side of Chryse Planitia far away from the landing site of

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