The Aeolian Environment of the Landing Site for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover in Oxia Planum, Mars

Abstract

Repeat, high-resolution orbital images and data from landers and rovers on the surface show that the sediment transport processes responsible for these aeolian features are currently active across much of the surface of Mars-a result of the interaction between surficial granular material and the thin Martian

Rivers and Lakes in Western Arabia Terra: The Fluvial Catchment of the ExoMars 2022 rover landing site

“…Figure 10). In CTX images, these terrains are predominantly dark in tone and either on the floor of impact craters associated with rimless crater lakes or large crater lakes (Figure 4a ridges (e.g., Favaro et al, 2021;Silvestro et al, 2021). These bands comprise a bright fringe at the edge of the feature, and a darker band inside, which transitions to a tone comparable to that of the surrounding plains in the centre of the feature.…”

Large Area High-Resolution 3D Mapping of Oxia Planum: The Landing Site for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Rover

“…The landing site area straddles the dichotomy boundary of Mars, which separates the northern lowlands from the southern highlands. The site slopes towards the north and hosts mineralogical (iron-magnesium rich clay minerals) and geomorphological evidence of liquid water in the ancient past [28][29][30][31], which motivated the choice of this site for this mission whose principal objective is to search for potential biomarkers indicating past life on Mars.…”

“…All results shown here are made for the Rosalind Franklin ExoMars 2022 rover's landing site at Oxia Planum [28][29][30][31]. This site is a 200 km wide clay bearing plain centred on 18.239 • N, 24.368 • W (see Figure 4) inside the United States Geological Survey (USGS)'s Oxia Palus (MC-11) quadrangle of Mars.…”

“…We focus on the Oxia Planum area [28][29][30][31], where the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian Roscosmos ExoMars mission will land the ESA "Rosalind Franklin" rover and the Roscosmos landing platform "Kazachok" in 2023. Large area high-resolution DTM mosaics, covering the 3-sigma landing ellipses, are produced here at 25 m/pixel for HRSC, 12 m/pixel for CTX, and at 50 cm/pixel for HiRISE.…”

“…Part of this area has been used for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory webGIS (web based Geographic Information System) called MMGIS (Multi-Mission Geographic Information System) [32] to assist the ExoMars team's geological characterisation of the area [33]. We focus on the Oxia Planum area [28][29][30][31], where the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian Roscosmos ExoMars mission will land the ESA "Rosalind Franklin" rover and the Roscosmos landing platform "Kazachok" in 2023. Large area high-resolution DTM mosaics, covering the 3-sigma landing ellipses, are produced here at 25m/pixel for HRSC, 12m/pixel for CTX, and at 50cm/pixel for HiRISE.…”