Publications
Filter Total Items: 910
Evolution of a lake margin recorded in the Sutton Island member of the Murray formation, Gale crater, Mars
This study uses data from the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover to document the facies of the Sutton Island member of the Murray formation, interpret paleoenvironments, and establish key stratigraphic transitions at Gale crater. Two facies associations were identified: Facies Association 1 (FA1) and Facies Association 2 (FA2). Individual facies in FA1 include planar-laminated mudstone with m
Authors
Samantha Gwizd, Christopher M. Fedo, John P. Grotzinger, Steve G. Banham, Frances Rivera-Hernandez, Sanjeev Gupta, Kathryn M. Stack, Lauren A. Edgar, Ashwin R. Vasavada, Joel M. Davis, Linda C. Kah
The lunar cratering chronology
This chapter provides an introduction to crater-size frequency distribution (CSFD) measurements and presents a review of the work performed on dating lunar geological units using CSFDs since the last New Views of the Moon volume (2006), including various volcanic and tectonic features, as well as individual impact craters. At the end of the chapter, implications for the new CSFD age determinations
Authors
Harald Hiesinger, Carolyn H. Van der Bogert, G. Michael, N. Schmedemann, W. Iqbal, Stuart J. Robbins, B. Ivanov, J.-P. Williams, M. Zanetti, J. Plescia, Lillian R. Ostrach, James W. Head III
Lunar mare basaltic volcanism: Volcanic features and emplacement processes
Volcanism is a fundamental process in the geological evolution of the Moon, providing clues to the composition and structure of the mantle, the location and duration of interior melting, the nature of convection and lunar thermal evolution. Progress in understanding volcanism has been remarkable in the short 60-year span of the Space Age. Before Sputnik 1 in 1957, the lunar farside was unknown, th
Authors
James W. Head III, Lionel Wilson, Harald Hiesinger, Carolyn H. Van der Bogert, Yuan Yuan Chen, James L. Dickson, Lisa Gaddis, Junichi Haruyama, Lauren Jozwiak, Erica Jawin, Chunlai Li, Jianzhong Liu, Tomokatsu Morota, Debra H. Needham, Lillian R. Ostrach, Carle M. Pieters, Tabb C. Prissel, Yuqi Qian, Lei Qiao, Malcolm R. Rutherford, David R. Scott, Jennifer L. Whitten, Long Xiao, Feng Zhang, Ouyang Ziyuan
Moon-forming impactor as a source of Earth’s basal mantle anomalies
Seismic images of Earth’s interior have revealed two continent-sized anomalies with low seismic velocities, known as the large low-velocity provinces (LLVPs), in the lowermost mantle. The LLVPs are often interpreted as intrinsically dense heterogeneities that are compositionally distinct from the surrounding mantle. Here we show that LLVPs may represent buried relics of Theia mantle material (TMM)
Authors
Qian Yuan, Mingming Li, Steven J. Desch, Byeongkwan Ko, Hongping Deng, Edward J. Garnero, Travis S. J. Gabriel, Jacob A. Kegerreis, Yoshinori Miyazaki, Vincent Eke, Paul D. Asimow
Relationship between explosive and effusive volcanism in the Montes Apenninus region of the Moon
Lunar Pyroclastic Deposits (LPDs) are sites of explosive volcanism and often occur in areas of effusive volcanism on the Moon. On Earth, it has been observed that most volcanism has both effusive and explosive phases, whereas on the Moon, these two types of volcanism have typically been considered separately. We hypothesize that the relationship between explosive and effusive volcanism on the Moon
Authors
Lori M Pigue, Kristen A. Bennett, Briony H.N. Horgan, Lisa Gaddis
Analyzing spatial distributions and alignments of pitted cone features in Utopia Planitia on Mars
Martian geomorphology and surface features provide links to understanding past geologic processes such as fluid movement, local and regional tectonics, and feature formation mechanisms. Pitted cones are common features in the northern plains basins of Mars. They have been proposed to have formed from upwelling volatile-rich fluids, such as magma or water-sediment slurries. In this study, we map th
Authors
Mackenzie M. Mills, Alfred S. McEwen, Amanda N. Hughes, Ji-Eun Kim, Chris Okubo
The inevitability of large shallow craters on Callisto and Ganymede: Implications for crater depth-diameter trends
Complex craters with diameters (D) ≥ 40 km on Callisto and Ganymede are shallower than would be expected from simply extrapolating the depth-diameter trend from smaller (D ≤ 40 km) craters. This unusual depth-diameter (d-D) trend, and associated changes in crater morphology, have been hypothesized to result from rheological transitions, including the existence of an ocean, within the moons' ice sh
Authors
Michael T. Bland, Veronica Bray
Evidence for fine-grained material at lunar red spots: Insights from thermal infrared and radar data sets
Lunar red spots are small spectrally red features that have been proposed to be the result of non-mare volcanism. Studies have shown that a number of red spots are silicic, and are spectrally distinct from both highlands and mare compositions. In this work, we use data from LRO Diviner, Mini-RF, and Arecibo to investigate the material properties of 10 red spots. We create albedo maps using Diviner
Authors
Benjamin Byron, Catherine Elder, Timothy Glotch, Paul Hayne, Lori M Pigue, Joshua T. S. Cahill
Exploring the interior of Europa with the Europa Clipper
The Galileo mission to Jupiter revealed that Europa is an ocean world. The Galileo magnetometer experiment in particular provided strong evidence for a salty subsurface ocean beneath the ice shell, likely in contact with the rocky core. Within the ice shell and ocean, a number of tectonic and geodynamic processes may operate today or have operated at some point in the past, including solid ice con
Authors
James Roberts, William B. McKinnon, Catherine Elder, Gabriel Tobie, John Biersteker, Duncan Young, Ryan S. Park, Gregor Steinbrügge, Francis Nimmo, Samuel Howell, Julie C. Castillo-Rogez, Morgan Cable, Jacob Abrahams, Michael T. Bland, Chase Chivers, Corey Cochrane, Andrew Dombard, Carolyn M. Ernst, Antonio Genova, Christopher Gerekos, Christopher R. Glein, Camilla Harris, Hamish Hay, Paul O. Hayne, Matthew Hedman, Hauke Hussmann, Xianzhe Jia, Krishan Khurana, Walter Kiefer, Randolph L. Kirk, Margaret Kivelson, Justin D. Lawrence, Erin J. Leonard, Jonathan Lunine, Erwan Mazarico, Thomas B. McCord, Alfred S. McEwen, Carol Paty, Lynnae Quick, Carol A. Raymond, Kurt Retherford, Lorenz Roth, Abigail Rymer, Joachim Saur, Kirk Scanlan, Dustin Schroeder, David Senske, Wencheng Shao, Krista Soderlund, Elizabeth Spiers, Marshall Styczinski, Paolo Tortora, Steven Vance, Michaela Villarreal, Benjamin Weiss, Joseph Westlake, Paul Withers, Natalie Wolfenbarger, Bonnie J. Buratti, Haje Korth, Robert Pappalardo, Interior Thematic Working Group
Viscous relaxation of Oort and Edgeworth craters on Pluto: Possible indicators of an epoch of early high heat flow
Impact craters, with their well-defined initial shapes, have proven useful as heat flow probes of a number of icy bodies, provided characteristics of viscous relaxation can be identified. For Pluto's numerous craters, such identifications are hampered/complicated by infilling and erosion by mobile volatile ices, but not in every case. Large craters offer relatively deep probes of rheological struc
Authors
W. B. McKinnon, Michael T. Bland, K. Singer, P. M. Schenk, S. Robbins
Mapping planetary bodies
As the United States and its space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), looks to send humans back to the Moon, many other countries and their space agencies are also sending orbiters, rovers, and sample return missions across the Solar System. We are living in an extraordinary age of planetary exploration, where every mission builds on the decades of advancements in sa
Authors
Trent M. Hare
The relation between decadal droughts and eruptions of Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, USA
In the past century, most eruptions of Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park's Norris Geyser Basin were mainly clustered in three episodes: 1961–1969, 1982–1984, and ongoing since 2018. These eruptive episodes resulted in extensive disturbance to surrounding trees. To characterize tree response over time as an indicator of geyser activity adjustments to climate variability, aerial and grou
Authors
Shaul Hurwitz, John C. King, Gregory T. Pederson, Mara H. Reed, Lauren N Harrison, Jefferson Hungerford, R. Greg Vaughan, Michael Manga