Thermal Stability and Emissivity Behavior (7-14 μm) of Ca-Sulfides under
Simulated Daytime Surface Conditions for Multiple Mercury days:
Implications for the formation of hollows and CaS detection by MERTIS
onboard the 3 BepiColombo mission
Abstract
Global mapping of the nature and distribution of volatiles such as
sulfides on Mercury’s surface is essential for understanding the thermal
evolution of the planet. The surface exposure of these sulfides over
extreme day-night temperature cycles (176 days; 450 degC to -170 degC)
on Mercury leads to thermal weathering of these sulfide compounds. It
has been seen that among the proposed sulfides on Mercury (MgS, FeS,
CaS, CrS, TiS, NaS, and MnS), CaS showed relatively stable and
distinctive spectral features in the thermal infrared region (TIR; 7-14
μm) when studied under the simulated Mercury day conditions for
temperatures ranging from 100 degC up to 500 degC under vacuum (0.1
mbar) (Varatharajan et al., 2019). In this study, we re-investigated the
stability of CaS and its spectral emissivity spectral behavior. We
exposed the sample for four consecutive Earth days simulating Mercury
day cycles and measured the TIR spectra of CaS for temperatures up to
500 degC (with steps of 100 degC) every day. This time the spectral
analysis is coupled and supported by XRD diffraction on the fresh and
temperature-processed sample, showing the mineralogical evolution with
temperature. We confirm that CaS is a stable compound and therefore it
would remain stable on Mercury’s surface regardless of investigated peak
surface temperatures. This study further implies that, for the hollows
dominated by the sublimation of sulfides on Mercury (Blewett et al.,
2013; Helbert et al., 2013a; Vilas et al., 2016), CaS could be the last
of the sulfides that could be mapped on Mercury as other sulfides were
lost by thermal decomposition, leaving behind hollows. This could make
CaS an important tracer for other sulfides, which might be lost in the
hollow-forming process and supports the detection of CaS within hollows
by MESSENGER (Vilas et al., 2016). The emissivity spectra reported here
are significant for the detection and mapping of CaS associated with
hollows and pyroclastics using the Mercury Radiometer and Thermal
Imaging Spectrometer (MERTIS) datasets.