Kiel 2004 – scientific programme

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EP: Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 9: Poster-2

EP 9.4: Poster

Tuesday, March 9, 2004, 17:45–19:30, Foyer

A New Inventory of Surface Faults on Mars — •C. Deuchler, J. Oberst, M. Wählisch, and E. Hauber — German Aerospace Center, Berlin-Adlershof

A MOLA (Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter) global shaded relief map (1 km/pixel) was used to map tectonic surface faults on Mars and ultimately to compile a uniform global set of fault data for the planet.

The MOLA topographic map was artificially illuminated from two different directions, 90 degrees apart, to avoid any sampling bias by illumination geometry. On this base the surface faults data was conveniently extracted, stored, and analyzed. Thus, we collected a total set of 3642 thrust faults and 3746 normal faults.

A digitized version of the USGS geological map of Mars with assigned surface ages from crater statistics enabled us to extract maximum surface ages for each fault.

Earlier catalogs of tectonic features were based on mapping of Viking Orbiter images, where the illumination geometry had to be taken as is. Therefore, while our data set includes less faults than previous ones, it is globally more homogeneous than the previous catalogs of tectonic features of Anderson et al., 2001 and Pounders et al., 2002 which were compiled before the availability of MOLA data.

Our new inventory of tectonic surface features allows us to carry out a variety of novel geologic studies. Specifically, we intend to use this digital data base to generate synthetic Mars quake catalogs for studies of performances of seismometer networks in the context of the Mars Netlander mission.