Change detection and monitoring of active Martian surface phenomena with the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO)

Rangarajan, Vidhya Ganesh; Tornabene, Livio L.; Osinski, Gordon R.; Conway, Susan J.; Seelos, Frank P.; Silvestro, Simone; Salese, Francesco; Pajola, Maurizio; Lucchetti, Alice; Munaretto, Giovanni; Bickel, Valentin T.; Thomas, Nicolas; Cremonese, Gabriele (2023). Change detection and monitoring of active Martian surface phenomena with the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). Icarus, 394, p. 115443. Elsevier 10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115443

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Mars is host to a variety of active surface processes that relate to changes in seasonal ice/frost, slope activity, wind and processes potentially relating to liquid water. Regular monitoring and change detection of these phenomena is crucial to not only provide us insights into present day Martian surface conditions, but also its past geologic and climatic scenarios. Visual comparisons of high-resolution remote sensing images of the surface from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have allowed detailed tracking and monitoring of these changes over time. The CaSSIS instrument onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas orbiter also provides a unique pathway to track areally-large surface changes in colour, that permits us to better constrain origin and evolution of various surface features. Since TGO operates in a non-sun-synchronous orbit, previously adopted qualitative methods like visual image comparisons for MRO cannot be adopted for CaSSIS-based change detection. Consequently, this study lists and describes in detail, the techniques that need to be adopted to conduct such change detection campaigns with CaSSIS, for the variety of active processes currently identified on Mars. This work also proposes and describes two additional semi-quantitative techniques for CaSSIS-based change detection, that may be used in concert with existing visual comparison methods to enable reliable change identification and tracking. It is observed that these supplementary methods work well in characterizing a variety of surface changes related to ice/frost and slope processes, and can provide reasonable spectral constraints to better understand their origin. These methods are not effective in providing quantitative constraints for purely physical changes. Instead, for long-period changes like aeolian bedform movement, digital image correlation techniques on ortho-rectified images, are recommended; while for short period changes like real-time dust devil activity, measurements based on CaSSIS stereo pairs of the region can be used to provide quantitative estimates of change.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > Space Research and Planetary Sciences
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute
10 Strategic Research Centers > Center for Space and Habitability (CSH)
08 Faculty of Science > Physics Institute > NCCR PlanetS

UniBE Contributor:

Bickel, Valentin Tertius, Thomas, Nicolas

Subjects:

500 Science > 520 Astronomy
600 Technology > 620 Engineering
500 Science > 530 Physics

ISSN:

0019-1035

Publisher:

Elsevier

Language:

English

Submitter:

Danielle Zemp

Date Deposited:

27 Feb 2023 13:41

Last Modified:

05 Mar 2023 02:18

Publisher DOI:

10.1016/j.icarus.2023.115443

BORIS DOI:

10.48350/179287

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/179287

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