We analyze Kodiak, an eroded delta remnant in Jezero Crater, Mars, using several hundred images from the Mastcam-Z and SuperCam instruments on the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. We create a high-accuracy digital terrain model to measure Kodiak’s stratigraphic layers, which we divide into three units and characterize individually. While each unit possesses geometries interpreted as consistent with a Gilbert-style delta formation, the older units exposed on Kodiak’s north to northeast sides include more complex layered structures with azimuthally varying foresets. We compare Kodiak’s northeast foresets with the clinoforms of Whale Mountain, an outcrop exposed in the Western Jezero Delta scarp, and show similar azimuthally varying foresets. The stratigraphic analysis presented herein (strike and dip, unit thickness, etc.) will help test and refine detailed sedimentological hypotheses for the formation and evolution of the Jezero delta. Our 3D reconstruction and measurements enable unprecedented precision to evaluate depositional models and advance geological interpretation.

Early observations from the Perseverance rover suggested a deltaic origin for the western fan of Jezero crater only from images of the Kodiak butte. Here, we use images from the SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager and the Mastcam-Z camera to analyze the western fan front along the rover traverse, and further assess its depositional origin. Outcrops in the middle to lower half of hillslopes are composed of planar, inclined beds of sandstone that are interpreted as foresets of deltaic deposits. Foresets are locally structured in ~20-25 m thick, ~80-100 m long, antiformal structures interpreted as deltaic mouth bars. Above these foresets are observed interbedded sandstones and boulder conglomerates, interpreted as fluvial topset beds. One well-preserved lens of boulder conglomerate displays rounded clasts within well-sorted sediment deposited in fining upward beds. We interpret these deposits as resulting from lateral accretion within fluvial channels. Estimations of peak discharge rates give a range between ~100 and ~500 m3.s-1 consistent with moderate to high floods. By contrast, boulder conglomerates exposed in the uppermost part of hillslopes are poorly sorted and truncate underlying beds. The presence of these boulder deposits suggests that intense, sediment-laden flood episodes occurred after the deltaic foreset and topset beds were deposited, although the origin, timing, and relationship of these boulder deposits to the ancient lake that once filled Jezero crater remains undetermined. Overall, these observations confirm the deltaic nature of the fan front, and suggest a highly variable fluvial input.

We have studied the properties of the Nili Fossae olivine lithology from orbital data and in situ by the Mars 2020 rover at the Séítah unit in Jezero crater. We used the geochemistry collected by the rover’s instruments to calculate the viscosity and relative flow distance of the Séítah unit. Based on the low viscosity and distribution of the unit we postulate a ponded lava flow origin for the olivine rich unit at Séítah. We calculate an approximate depth for the cumulate layer of the lava pond based on the viscosity of the unit and model of Worster et al. (1993). We show that the resolution of orbital data is inadequate to map the phyllosilicate 2.38 μm band and demonstrate that it can be supplemented by in situ data from Mars 2020 SuperCam Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and reflectance observations to show that the low Al phyllosilicate in the olivine cumulate in the Séítah formation is either talc, serpentine, hectorite, Fe/Mg smectite, saponite or stevensite. We discuss two intertwining aspects of the history of the lithology: 1) the potential emplacement and properties of the cumulate layer within a ponded lava flow, using previously published models of ponded lava flows and lava lakes, and 2) the limited extent of post emplacement alteration, including phyllosilicate and carbonate alteration.

We have studied the observed properties of the Nili Fossae olivine-phyllosilicate-carbonate lithology from orbital data and in situ by the Mars 2020 rover at the Séítah unit in Jezero crater, including: 1) composition 2) grain size 3) inferred viscosity (calculated based on geochemistry collected by SuperCam (Wiens et al., 2022)). Based on the low viscosity and distribution of the unit we postulate a flood lava origin for the olivine-phyllosilicate-carbonate at Séítah. We include a new CRISM map of the phyllosilicate 2.38 μm band and use in situ data from Mars 2020 SuperCam Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and VISIR and MastCam-Z observations to show that the phyllosilicate in the olivine cumulate in the Séítah formation is either talc, serpentine, hectorite, Fe/Mg smectite, saponite or stevensite. We discuss two intertwining aspects of the history of the lithology: 1) the emplacement and properties of the cumulate layer within a lava lake, based on terrestrial analogs in the Pilbara, Western Australia, and using previously published models of flood lavas and lava lakes, and 2) the limited extent of post emplacement alteration, including phyllosilicate and carbonate alteration.

The Perseverance rover, Mars 2020 mission, landed on the surface of the Jezero Crater, on February, 18th 2021. This Martian crater is suspected to have hosted a paleolake as evidenced by the numerous detections of aqueously-altered phases and thus is a promising candidate for the search for past Martian life. The SuperCam instrument, elaborated by a consortium of American and European laboratories, plays a leading role in this investigation thanks to its highly versatile payload providing rapid, synergistic, fine-scale mineralogy, chemistry, and color imaging. After its landing, the first measurements of Martian targets with the infrared spectrometer of SuperCam (IRS) showed new instrumental behaviors that had to be characterized and calibrated to derive unbiased science data. The IRS radiometric response has thus been calibrated using periodic observations of the Aluwhite SuperCam Calibration Target (SCCT). Parasitic effects were understood and mitigated, and the instrumental dark and noise are characterized and modeled. The reflectance calibrated data products, provided periodically on the NASA Planetary Data System, are corrected from the main instrumental features.

Titan is a prime target for astrobiological research. Organic materials from atmospheric chemistry precipitate on the surface and are subject to geological processes (e.g. eolian and fluvial erosion) that lead to the formation of dune fields, river networks and seas similar to their terrestrial counterparts. The analysis of the surface reflectance in the near-infrared (NIR) allows to constrain the surface composition, which is crucial to understand these atmosphere/surface interactions. However, Titan’s atmosphere prevents the surface from being probed in the NIR, except in 7 transmission windows where the methane absorption is sufficiently low (centered at 0.93, 1.08, 1.27, 1.59, 2.01, 2.7- 2.8 and 5 μm). We use an updated version of the Radiative Transfer (RT) model of Hirtzig et al. (2013), with updated gases and aerosols opacities, in order to better simulate atmospheric absorption and scattering and retrieve surface albedos in the 7 NIR transmission windows with an enhanced accuracy. Our RT model is based on the SHDOMPP and CDISORT (Evans, 2007 and Buras, 2011) solvers to solve the RT equations in plane-parallel and pseudo-spherical approximations respectively. We recently improved atmospheric inputs of the model with up-to-date gaseous CH4, CH3D, 13CH4, C2H2, HCN and CO abundances profiles and absorption coefficients (Vinatier et al. 2007, Niemann et al. 2010; Maltagliati et al. 2015; Serigano et al. 2016; Rey et al. 2018; Thelen et al. 2019; Gautier et al. 2021), and improved aerosol optical properties. In particular, optical properties of Titan’s aerosols are now computed from a fractal aggregate model (Rannou et al. 2003) constrained by measurements of the Huygens probe (Tomasko et al. 2008 and Doose et al. 2016). The new version of our RT model is benchmarked with the help of the most recent RT model for Titan (Coutelier et al. 2021) and validated using observations of the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) onboard Huygens. Coupled with an efficient inversion scheme, our model can be apply to the Cassini’s Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) dataset to retrieve atmospheric opacity and surface albedos at regional and global scales. This will help to analyze future James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of Titan (Nixon et al. 2016) and prepare the Dragonfly mission (Lorenz et al. 2018).

We examine the observed properties of the Nili Fossae olivine-clay-carbonate lithology from orbital data and in situ by the Mars 2020 rover at the Séítah unit in Jezero crater, including: 1) composition (Liu, 2022) 2) grain size (Tice, 2022) 3) inferred viscosity (calculated based on geochemistry collected by SuperCam (Wiens, 2022)). Based on the low viscosity and distribution of the unit we postulate a flood lava origin for the olivine-clay-carbonate at Séítah. We include a new CRISM map of the clay 2.38 μm band and use in situ data to show that the clay in the olivine cumulate in the Séítah formation is consistent with talc or serpentine from Mars 2020 SuperCam LIBS and VISIR and MastCam-Z observations. We discuss two intertwining aspects of the history of the lithology: 1) the emplacement and properties of the cumulate layer within a lava lake, based on terrestrial analogs in the Pilbara, Western Australia, and using previously published models of flood lavas and lava lakes, and 2) the limited extent of post emplacement alteration, including clay and carbonate alteration (Clave, this issue; Mandon, this issue).

Mapping Titan’s surface albedo is a necessary step to give reliable constraints on its composition. However, even after the end of the Cassini mission, surface albedo maps of Titan, especially over large regions, are still very rare, the surface windows being strongly affected by atmospheric contributions (absorption, scattering). A full radiative transfer model is an essential tool to remove these effects, but too time-consuming to treat systematically the ~50000 hyperspectral images VIMS acquired since the beginning of the mission. We developed a massive inversion of VIMS data based on lookup tables computed from a state-of-the-art radiative transfer model in pseudo-spherical geometry, updated with new aerosol properties coming from our analysis of observations acquired recently by VIMS (solar occultations and emission phase curves). Once the physical properties of gases, aerosols and surface are fixed, the lookup tables are built for the remaining free parameters: the incidence, emergence and azimuth angles, given by navigation; and two products (the aerosol opacity and the surface albedo at all wavelengths). The lookup table grid was carefully selected after thorough testing. The data inversion on these pre-computed spectra (opportunely interpolated) is more than 1000 times faster than recalling the full radiative transfer at each minimization step. We present here the results from selected flybys. We invert mosaics composed by couples of flybys observing the same area at two different times. The composite albedo maps do not show significant discontinuities in any of the surface windows, suggesting a robust correction of the effects of the geometry (and thus the aerosols) on the observations. Maps of aerosol and albedo uncertainties are also provided, along with absolute errors. We are thus able to provide reliable surface albedo maps at pixel scale for entire regions of Titan and for the whole VIMS spectral range.

Perseverance landed at the Octavia E. Butler landing site next to the Séítah dune region in Jezero crater on 18 February 2021, in close proximity to the largest exposed carbonate deposit on Mars. These carbonate signatures have been shown to be associated with the strongest olivine signatures at Jezero crater (Goudge+ 2015, Brown+ 2020). Alteration of olivine can lead to carbonate+H2 production, an energy source for microbes (Mayhew+, 2013). The question of the origin of the olivine-carbonate unit represents both an opportunity and a challenge for the rover mission and future sample return efforts. Carbonate The landing site is not near the region of carbonate detections (Figure 1), however the rover’s westward traverse will take us over the carbonates on approach to the crater rim. No reliable indications of the 2.5 μm carbonate band have yet been convincingly detected by the SCAM VISIR instrument. Olivine Studies of the olivine-carbonate unit concluded the olivine is relatively Fe-rich and coarse grained (mm: Poulet+ 2007, Clenet+ 2013). The strongest in-situ olivine signatures are found in dune material analysed by LIBS/VISIR (Beyssac+ Mandon+ this conf). This grain size characterization work may be used to investigate the interaction of olivine with water and CO2 (Escamilla-Roa+ 2020). These surface-gas processes are enhanced when olivine is in fine grain form. Ash dispersal modeling is ongoing (Ravanis+ this conf) to determine the range different sized ash particles could have traveled on ancient Mars. We cannot directly compare the 1 μm band for CRISM and VISIR, so we developed a new method that measures the curvature of three points on the absorption bands to assess their relative Fo# shifts and applied it to both datasets. Lab spectroscopy will be used to assess spectral variations with composition versus grain size. Two key factors driving the Fo# are mantle composition and melt temperature. Brown+ (2020) estimated a range of Fo44-65 for the most redshifted olivine observed by CRISM. McGetchin+Smythe (1978) showed that an Fe-rich mantle composition would produce highly viscous lavas and suggested an upper bound of Fo70 for olivine. Understanding the astrobiological potential of the olivine-carbonate unit is a priority of M2020 (Farley+ 2020) and we will speculate on potential formation models in this contribution.