THE CASE FOR NE SYRTIS AS THE LANDING SITE FOR MARS SCIENCE LABORATORY (MSL) USING CRISM DATA PRODUCTS

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) named Curiosity will be launched in 2011. Curiosity is already assembled, and testing is being done. The major task for the mission now is to choose a landing site on Mars for the MSL rover. Landing site candidates must pass scientific standards as well as engineering parameters. Participants in MSL Landing Site workshops have narrowed down the candidate site list from about 60 to a final list of 4 worthy sites. Since the postponement of the mission from 2009 to 2011, this final list has become flexible with the understanding that any newly proposed sites must be as or more scientifically compelling and as safe as the four existing sites. Out of seven additional sites that the MSL Landing Site Steering Committee evaluated relative to the four existing sites, two new candidate sites were chosen: E Margaritifer Terra and NE Syrtis Major. These two sites will be targeted for additional remote sensing by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey. Analyses of existing remote sensing images from NE Syrtis are the focus of this study. MRO’s Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) has already taken several half resolution and full resolution images of areas proximal to the proposed landing ellipse. Although CRISM will specifically target the whole area in which the ellipse lies before final selection of a site is made, it is a worthy endeavor to examine the area now with the data that we already have. This manuscript examines 17 existing CRISM data product locales within a few hundred kilometers of 17°N 77°E in an attempt to interpolate the surface mineralogy of the region. The reason that the area is so interesting is that NE Syrtis offers a diverse mineralogical assortment that straddles the boundary between the Noachian and Hesperian epochs. Another interesting observation of the area is that methane plumes have been revealed there. This area, because of its association with localized methane output, offers a unique opportunity to examine the hydrocarbon gas right in the location of its recognition. Measuring the carbon-isotopic weight of the methane can tell us a great deal about the source of its production. In addition to the use of CRISM data to understand the general mineralogy of NE Syrtis, this paper utilizes spectral data from Mars Express and terrestrially based spectrometry.