Project Description
Our principle objective for the proposed work is to map dozens of trough migration paths (TMPs) in data from the SHARAD (Shallow Radar) instrument onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Dr. Smith will guide a graduate student at Purdue University in this mapping effort utilizing the newly available 3D radar volume (Foss et al., 2017; Putzig et al., 2018), which offers the ability to examine the data in orientations not previously available from 2D SHARAD profiles. He will train a student to analyze the surface and subsurface morphologies and stratigraphies associated with the TMPs following the characterization methods of Smith and Holt (2015) in order to understand regional variations that have occurred within the ice and its interactions with the atmosphere that affect vertical stratigraphy. Finally, he will support measurements of present-day trough slopes and slope orientations in data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter onboard Mars Global Surveyor.