Every 3 or 4 years an International Conference on Mars is held to summarize the current understanding of that planet. The 6th of these was held in Pasadena, CA July 20-25 and was built around the exciting recent results from two still-working orbital spacecraft, Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odessey. Data from these two missions have overturned some long-held views about Mars and revealed aspects of the planet that were previously unexpected. The meeting format had both oral and poster papers and an outdoor box lunch each data that kept participants together to encourage discussion. Herb Frey and Susan Sakimoto both gave oral presentations at the meeting. Kelly Kolb (Villanova) and Erin Frey (South River HS), two summer interns working on Mars research, also attended.
In the Early Mars session, Frey discussed “Buried Impact Basins and the Earliest History of Mars”. The lowland crust is very ancient, contrary to earlier beliefs, but may be slightly younger than the highlands (in terms of total crater population). It seems likely the lowlands were formed by large impacts like those seen in the MOLA data. Frey also showed that although most large impact basins have no strong magnetic anomalies, two of the oldest actually do and likely predate the loss of the global field. The global field may have died about the time the lowlands formed.
Sakimoto described small martian volcanoes and terrestrial analogs in “Re-assessing Plains-Style Volcanism on Mars”. MOLA has revealed thousands of small volcanic constructs on the surface of Mars, and many plains are dominated by features which have strong similarities to small volcanoes in Idaho’s Snake River Plain. Field work there by Sakimoto and co-authors Tracy Gregg and Scott Hughes has revealed topographic characteristics which may be diagnostic of petrologic evolution. If true, this may provide a way to determine the geo-chemical nature of the martian examples.
Contact: Herb Frey, GSFC, Code 921 (Herbert.V.Frey@nasa.gov)
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Responsible NASA official: Dr. Herbert Frey