Spectroscopic observation of Mars

Visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy has proven a powerful tool for exploring the geology of Mars. Most of this data has been obtained from Earth, but the technique is ideally suited to orbital application, as proposed for the U.S. Mars Geoscience/Climatology Orbiter mission. Spectral reflectance in the near-UV and visible is highly diagnostic of ferric-iron mineralogy, and has shown that Fe³⁺ in the ubiquitous bright dust and soil is amorphous or poorly-crystalline. Other iron-oxide minerals, indicative of other modes or episodes of crustal alteration, may be found in spatially localized deposits. Clay minerals (hydroxylated silicates) have diagnostic vibrational absorptions throughout the near-infrared. While some form of bound water and/or OH has been known on Mars for many years, a new result presented here is the identification of structural OH in a dilute or poorly crystalline magnesian clay. Salts such as carbonates, sulfates, and nitrates have not yet been detected in martian soils but have diagnostic spectral features in the 3- to 4-μm region, best suited to Mars-orbital observation. Analysis of reflectance spectra of low-albedo regions is a primary source of evidence for a basaltic or ultramafic crust, with identification of abundant clinopyroxene and possible detection of other mafic minerals. The distinctive near-infrared spectral shape of dark regions indicates that the dark materials commonly consist of relatively unaltered rocks or rock fragments very thinly coated by (or mixed with) bright oxidized material similar to the global dust. Visible and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy is also a sensitive technique for detecting and analyzing water ice, as has been demonstrated on Mars by observations of the north polar cap.     

Venus, Mars, and the ices on Mercury and the moon: astrobiological implications and proposed mission designs

Venus and Mars likely had liquid water bodies on their surface early in the Solar System history. The surfaces of Venus and Mars are presently not a suitable habitat for life, but reservoirs of liquid water remain in the atmosphere of Venus and the subsurface of Mars, and with it also the possibility of microbial life. Microbial organisms may have adapted to live in these ecological niches by the evolutionary force of directional selection. Missions to our neighboring planets should therefore be planned to explore these potentially life-containing refuges and return samples for analysis. Sample return missions should also include ice samples from Mercury and the Moon, which may contain information about the biogenic material that catalyzed the early evolution of life on Earth (or elsewhere). To obtain such information, science-driven exploration is necessary through varying degrees of mission operation autonomy. A hierarchical mission design is envisioned that includes spaceborne (orbital), atmosphere (airborne), surface (mobile such as rover and stationary such as lander or sensor), and subsurface (e.g., ground-penetrating radar, drilling, etc.) agents working in concert to allow for sufficient mission safety and redundancy, to perform extensive and challenging reconnaissance, and to lead to a thorough search for evidence of life and habitability.     

Mercury: A post-Mariner 10 assessment

Our knowledge of Mercury has improved dramatically since the flight of Mariner 10. The planet is probably differentiated into a large iron-rich core (75% of the total radius) and a relatively thin (600 km) silicate mantle. Although the surface of Mercury superficially resembles the Moon, there are three main differences: (1) large areas of relatively old intercrater plains, (2) a widespread (probably global) distribution of lobate scarps, and (3) a similar albedo between young smooth plains and the older mercurian highlands. The origin of Mercury's plains units is still uncertain but a volcanic origin is favored for at least large tracts of the younger smooth plains. The older intercrater plains seem to span a range of ages, large tracts of which appear to have been implaced during the period of intense bombardment. The widespread distribution of lobate scarps probably resulted from a period of global contraction relatively late in Mercury's history. This period of contraction probably resulted primarily from cooling of the lithosphere and/or core following core formation. The crater diameter density distribution on the Moon, Mars and Mercury indicates that all the terrestrial planets experienced a period of intense bombardment early in their histories and that the objects responsible for this bombardment probably belonged to the same population(s).     

The D/H Ratio in Chondrites

The statistical distribution of all available published D/H ratios of carbonaceous chondrites is presented. The possible interpretations of this distribution are reviewed at the global scale of the solar system planetary objects and at the scale defined by the carbonaceous meteorites. New issues concerning the chemical origin of the deuterium enrichment in solar system water and organic molecules are put into light by this exercise. This distribution is a robust constraint on the origin of water on Earth. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Mercury Dual Imaging System on the MESSENGER Spacecraft

The Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS) on the MESSENGER spacecraft will provide critical measurements tracing Mercury’s origin and evolution. MDIS consists of a monochrome narrow-angle camera (NAC) and a multispectral wide-angle camera (WAC). The NAC is a 1.5° field-of-view (FOV) off-axis reflector, coaligned with the WAC, a four-element refractor with a 10.5° FOV and 12-color filter wheel. The focal plane electronics of each camera are identical and use a 1,024×1,024 Atmel (Thomson) TH7888A charge-coupled device detector. Only one camera operates at a time, allowing them to share a common set of control electronics. The NAC and the WAC are mounted on a pivoting platform that provides a 90° field-of-regard, extending 40° sunward and 50° anti-sunward from the spacecraft +Z-axis—the boresight direction of most of MESSENGER’s instruments. Onboard data compression provides capabilities for pixel binning, remapping of 12-bit data into 8 bits, and lossless or lossy compression. MDIS will acquire four main data sets at Mercury during three flybys and the two-Mercury-solar-day nominal mission: a monochrome global image mosaic at near-zero emission angles and moderate incidence angles, a stereo-complement map at off-nadir geometry and near-identical lighting, multicolor images at low incidence angles, and targeted high-resolution images of key surface features. These data will be used to construct a global image base map, a digital terrain model, global maps of color properties, and mosaics of high-resolution image strips. Analysis of these data will provide information on Mercury’s impact history, tectonic processes, the composition and emplacement history of volcanic materials, and the thickness distribution and compositional variations of crustal materials. This paper summarizes MDIS’s science objectives and technical design, including the common payload design of the MDIS data processing units, as well as detailed results from ground and early flight calibrations and plans for Mercury image products to be generated from MDIS data.     

Towards a new paradigm: from a quasi-steady description to a dynamical description of the magnetosphere

A great deal of the research done on the dynamical process of the solar wind- magnetosphere interaction is based on large-scale, quasi-steady theoretical models, such as the classical reconnection model. However, it can be argued that the theoretical and observational foundations of these commonly believed paradigms are not always strong, and support for these models is sometimes weak, controversial or inconsistent. This paper discusses the need for a transition from an oversimplified quasi-steady paradigm towards a more realistic one including the dynamics of MHD waves and wave packets. The effects of localized wave packets may be most important in active plasma regions, where ideal MHD breaks down and localized, time-dependent processes become dominant. New insights into the theories of field-aligned current generation, auroral particle acceleration and the concept of reconnection may be found by including MHD wave propagation and wave packet dynamics.     

MESSENGER Mission Design and Navigation

Nearly three decades after the Mariner 10 spacecraft’s third and final targeted Mercury flyby, the 3 August 2004 launch of the MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft began a new phase of exploration of the closest planet to our Sun. In order to ensure that the spacecraft had sufficient time for pre-launch testing, the NASA Discovery Program mission to orbit Mercury experienced launch delays that required utilization of the most complex of three possible mission profiles in 2004. During the 7.6-year mission, the spacecraft’s trajectory will include six planetary flybys (including three of Mercury between January 2008 and September 2009), dozens of trajectory-correction maneuvers (TCMs), and a year in orbit around Mercury. Members of the mission design and navigation teams optimize the spacecraft’s trajectory, specify TCM requirements, and predict and reconstruct the spacecraft’s orbit. These primary mission design and navigation responsibilities are closely coordinated with spacecraft design limitations, operational constraints, availability of ground-based tracking stations, and science objectives. A few days after the spacecraft enters Mercury orbit in mid-March 2011, the orbit will have an 80° inclination relative to Mercury’s equator, a 200-km minimum altitude over 60°N latitude, and a 12-hour period. In order to accommodate science goals that require long durations during Mercury orbit without trajectory adjustments, pairs of orbit-correction maneuvers are scheduled every 88 days (once per Mercury year).     

Electrodynamic coupling of the magnetosphere and ionosphere

The auroral zone ionosphere is coupled to the outer magnetosphere by means of field-aligned currents. Parallel electric fields associated with these currents are now widely accepted to be responsible for the acceleration of auroral particles. This paper will review the theoretical concepts and models describing this coupling. The dynamics of auroral zone particles will be described, beginning with the adiabatic motions of particles in the converging geomagnetic field in the presence of parallel potential drops and then considering the modifications to these adiabatic trajectories due to wave-particle interactions. The formation of parallel electric fields can be viewed both from microscopic and macroscopic viewpoints. The presence of a current carrying plasma can give rise to plasma instabilities which in a weakly turbulent situation can affect the particle motions, giving rise to an effective resistivity in the plasma. Recent satellite observations, however, indicate that the parallel electric field is organized into discrete potential jumps, known as double layers. From a macroscopic viewpoint, the response of the particles to a parallel potential drop leads to an approximately linear relationship between the current density and the potential drop.The currents flowing in the auroral circuit must close in the ionosphere. To a first approximation, the ionospheric conductivity can be considered to be constant, and in this case combining the ionospheric Ohm's Law with the linear current-voltage relation for parallel currents leads to an outer scale length, above which electric fields can map down to the ionosphere and below which parallel electric fields become important. The effects of particle precipitation make the picture more complex, leading to enhanced ionization in upward current regions and to the possibility of feedback interactions with the magnetosphere.Determining adiabatic particle orbits in steady-state electric and magnetic fields can be used to determine the self-consistent particle and field distributions on auroral field lines. However, it is difficult to pursue this approach when the fields are varying with time. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models deal with these time-dependent situations by treating the particles as a fluid. This class of model, however, cannot treat kinetic effects in detail. Such effects can in some cases be modeled by effective transport coefficients inserted into the MHD equations. Intrinsically time-dependent processes such as the development of magnetic micropulsations and the response of the magnetosphere to ionospheric fluctuations can be readily treated in this framework.The response of the lower altitude auroral zone depends in part on how the system is driven. Currents are generated in the outer parts of the magnetosphere as a result of the plasma convection. The dynamics of this region is in turn affected by the coupling to the ionosphere. Since dissipation rates are very low in the outer magnetosphere, the convection may become turbulent, implying that nonlinear effects such as spectral transfer of energy to different scales become important. MHD turbulence theory, modified by the ionospheric coupling, can describe the dynamics of the boundary-layer region. Turbulent MHD fluids can give rise to the generation of field-aligned currents through the so-called -effect, which is utilized in the theory of the generation of the Earth's magnetic field. It is suggested that similar processes acting in the boundary-layer plasma may be ultimately responsible for the generation of auroral currents.     

A statistical analysis of substorm associated tail activity

Substorm onset timing is a critical issue in magnetotail dynamics research. Solar wind energy is accumulated in the magnetosphere and the configuration of the magnetosphere evolves toward an unstable state during the growth phase. At some point, the expansion phase begins and the stored energy is released through a variety of processes that return the magnetosphere to a lower energy state. In recovery the various processes die away. Unfortunately, the ground and magnetospheric signatures of onset, i.e. energy release, can be seen both in the growth phase prior to onset and in the expansion phase after onset. Some investigators refer to each of these events as a substorm. Tail observations suggest that most substorms have one event that differentiates the behavior of the tail field and plasma. We refer to this time as the “main substorm onset”. Each substorm associated phenomenon is timed independently and then compared with main substorm onsets. ISEE-2 tail observations are used to examine the tail lobe magnetic conditions associated with substorms because ISEE-2 orbit has a high inclination and frequently observes lobe field. Approximately 70 ∼ 75% of tail lobe B_t and B_z change are associated with the main substorm onset. If the satellite is more than 3 Re above (below) the neutral sheet, 86% (57%) of plasma pressure dropouts are associated with substorms. We interpret our results as evidence that the effect of the growth phase is to drive the magnetosphere towards instability. As it approaches global instability local regions become temporarily unstable but are rapidly quenched. Eventually one of these events develops into the global instability that releases most of the stored energy and returns the magnetosphere to a more stable configuration.     

Spectral signatures of photosynthesis. II. Coevolution with other stars and the atmosphere on extrasolar worlds

As photosynthesis on Earth produces the primary signatures of life that can be detected astronomically at the global scale, a strong focus of the search for extrasolar life will be photosynthesis, particularly photosynthesis that has evolved with a different parent star. We take previously simulated planetary atmospheric compositions for Earth-like planets around observed F2V and K2V, modeled M1V and M5V stars, and around the active M4.5V star AD Leo; our scenarios use Earth's atmospheric composition as well as very low O2 content in case anoxygenic photosynthesis dominates. With a line-by-line radiative transfer model, we calculate the incident spectral photon flux densities at the surface of the planet and under water. We identify bands of available photosynthetically relevant radiation and find that photosynthetic pigments on planets around F2V stars may peak in absorbance in the blue, K2V in the red-orange, and M stars in the near-infrared, in bands at 0.93-1.1 microm, 1.1-1.4 microm, 1.5-1.8 microm, and 1.8-2.5 microm. However, underwater organisms will be restricted to wavelengths shorter than 1.4 microm and more likely below 1.1 microm. M star planets without oxygenic photosynthesis will have photon fluxes above 1.6 microm curtailed by methane. Longer-wavelength, multi-photo-system series would reduce the quantum yield but could allow for oxygenic photosystems at longer wavelengths. A wavelength of 1.1 microm is a possible upper cutoff for electronic transitions versus only vibrational energy; however, this cutoff is not strict, since such energetics depend on molecular configuration. M star planets could be a half to a tenth as productive as Earth in the visible, but exceed Earth if useful photons extend to 1.1 microm for anoxygenic photosynthesis. Under water, organisms would still be able to survive ultraviolet flares from young M stars and acquire adequate light for growth.