Radar Soundings of the Subsurface of Mars

Giovanni Picardi (1) , Jeffrey Plaut (2) , Daniela Biccari (1) , Ornella Bombaci (3) , Diego Calabrese (3) , Marco Cartacci (1) , Andrea Cicchetti (1) , Stephen Clifford (4) , Peter Edenhofer (5) , William Farrell (6) , Costanzo Federico (7) , Alessandro Frigeri (7) , Donald Gurnett (8) , Tor Hagfors (9) , Essam Heggy (4) , Alain Hérique (10) , Richard Huff (8) , Anton Ivanov (2) , William Johnson (2) , Rolando Jordan (2) , Donald Kirchner (8) , Wlodek Kofman (10) , Carlton Leuschen (11) , Erling Nielsen (9) , R. Orosei (12) , Elena Pettinelli (13) , Roger Phillips (14) , Dirk Plettemeier (15) , Ali Safaeinili (2) , Roberto Seu (1) , Ellen Stofan (16) , Giuliano Vannaroni (17) , Thomas Watters (18) , Enrico Zampolini (3)

1 Dipartimento INFOCOM [Roma]
2 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
3 ALENIA - ALENIA Aeronautica
4 LPI - Lunar and Planetary Institute [Houston]
5 Fakultät für Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
6 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
7 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra
8 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Iowa City]
9 MPS - Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
10 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie de Grenoble
11 APL - Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory [Laurel, MD]
12 IASF-Roma - Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica - Roma
13 Dipartimento di Fisica
14 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences [St Louis]
15 Fakultaet fuer Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
16 Proxemy Research Inc
17 IFSI - Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario
18 CEPS - Center for Earth and Planetary Studies [Washington]

The martian subsurface has been probed to kilometer depths by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter. Signals penetrate the polar layered deposits, probably imaging the base of the deposits. Data from the northern lowlands of Chryse Planitia have revealed a shallowly buried quasi-circular structure about 250 kilometers in diameter that is interpreted to be an impact basin. In addition, a planar reflector associated with the basin structure may indicate the presence of a low-loss deposit that is more than 1 kilometer thick.

Keywords: GEOLOGIC HISTORY; EVOLUTION

Giovanni Picardi, Jeffrey Plaut, Daniela Biccari, Ornella Bombaci, Diego Calabrese, et al.. Radar Soundings of the Subsurface of Mars. Science, 2005, 310 (5756), pp.1925-1928. ⟨10.1126/science.1122165⟩. ⟨insu-00356405⟩