P43B-2119
ChemCam First Discovery of High Silica Sediments in Gale Crater
Thursday, 17 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Jens Frydenvang1, Patrick James Gasda1, Roger C Wiens2, Horton E Newsom3, John Bridges4, Olivier Gasnault5, Sylvestre Maurice6, Olivier Forni6, Nicolas Mangold7, Agnes Cousin6, Valérie Payré8, Ryan B Anderson9, Igor G. Mitrofanov10, Insoo Jun11, Melissa S Rice12, Ralph Milliken13, Peter Edwards4, David T Vaniman14, Richard V Morris15, David Frederick Blake16, Ralf Gellert17, Lucy M Thompson18, Benton C Clark19, Joel Hurowitz20, Dawn Y Sumner21, Bethany L Ehlmann22, Abigail Fraeman22, Kjartan Münster Kinch23, Morten B Madsen24, Fred Calef25, John P Grotzinger22, Ashwin R Vasavada25 and The MSL Science Team, (1)Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (2)Space Science and Applications, Los Alamos, NM, United States, (3)University of New Mexico Main Campus, Albuquerque, NM, United States, (4)University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom, (5)Universite de Toulouse, Toulouse Cedex 4, France, (6)IRAP, Toulouse, France, (7)LPGN Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes, Nantes Cedex 03, France, (8)University of Lorraine Nancy, Nancy Cedex, France, (9)USGS Astrogeology Science Center, Flagstaff, AZ, United States, (10)Space Research Institute RAS, Moscow, Russia, (11)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (12)Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, United States, (13)Brown University, Providence, RI, United States, (14)Planetary Science Institute Tucson, Tucson, AZ, United States, (15)NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, United States, (16)NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (17)University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada, (18)University of New Brunswick, Planetary and Space Science Centre, Fredericton, NB, Canada, (19)Space Science Institute Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (20)Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States, (21)University of California, Davis, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Davis, CA, United States, (22)California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, (23)Niels Bohr Inst p Rockefeller, Copenhagen K, Denmark, (24)Niels Bohr Institute - University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, (25)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
On sol 991, The Curiosity rover ascended a steep slope to Marias Pass in Gale Crater. Close to the top, ChemCam analyzed the rock target Elk from an apparent bright unit. Utilizing the new elemental calibration implemented for ChemCam in the summer of 2015, four of five points on Elk were measured to contain 76-82 wt% SiO
2 and >3 wt% TiO
2, whereas the last point showed elevated CaSO
4. The Elk target is identified to be part of the Murray formation, and hence related to the Pahrump area mudstones that were subjected to intensive studies by the Curiosity rover team over the sols 758-948. While the Murray formation west of Elk did show elevated SiO
2 (~65 wt%) compared to the Pahrump area, no targets with similarly high SiO
2 wt% as Elk were observed, thus prompting - together with detection of anomalously high DAN H signals in the same area - the Curiosity rover to return to the Elk target area for additional analyses. This return led to numerous additional high Si observations (targets Pistol, Mary, Shepard, Dublin Gulch and Frog) that all corroborated the initial high Si observation at Elk. Additionally, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) analyzed the target Lamoose and found SiO
2 content in excess of 72 wt% and moderately elevated TiO
2. Considering the difference in footprint (1.7 cm for APXS vs ~400μm for ChemCam) and the fact that the target couldn’t be brushed, this is considered a good corroboration of the very high Si observed with ChemCam.
These targets suggest that the Elk-area targets represent an end-member of the Murray formation, but there are multiple working hypotheses for the origin of the high SiO2 and TiO2 in these: 1. primary precipitates from the water column of a lake, 2. a post-depositional leaching/weathering front and 3. a hydrothermal silica precipitate.
