RESUMEN
Future human missions to the surface of the Moon and Mars will involve scientific exploration requiring new support tools to enable rapid and high quality science decision-making. Here, we describe the PANGAEA (Planetary ANalogue Geological and Astrobiological Exercise for Astronauts) Mineralogical Database developed by ESA (European Space Agency): a catalog of petrographic and spectroscopic information on all currently known minerals identified on the Moon, Mars, and associated with meteorites. The catalog also includes minerals found in the analog field sites used for ESA's geology and astrobiology training course PANGAEA, to broaden the database coverage. The Mineralogical Database is composed of the Summary Catalog of Planetary Analog Minerals and of the Spectral Archive and is freely available in the public repository of ESA PANGAEA. The Summary Catalog provides essential descriptive information for each mineral, including name (based on the International Mineralogical Association recommendation), chemical formula, mineral group, surface abundance on planetary bodies, geological significance in the context of planetary exploration, number of collected VNIR and Raman spectra, likelihood of detection using different spectral methods, and bibliographic references evidencing their detection in extraterrestrial or terrestrial analog environments. The Spectral Archive provides a standard library for planetary in-situ human and robotic exploration covering Visual-Near-Infrared reflective (VNIR) and Raman spectroscopy (Raman). To populate this library, we collected VNIR and Raman spectra for mineral entries in the Summary Catalog from open-access archives and analyzed them to select the ones with the best spectral features. We also supplemented this collection with our own bespoke measurements. Additionally, we compiled the chemical compositions for all the minerals based on their empirical formula, to allow identification using the measured abundances provided by LIBS and XRF analytical instruments. When integrated into an operational support system like ESA's Electronic Fieldbook (EFB) system, the Mineralogical Database can be used as a real-time and autonomous decision support tool for sampling operations on the Moon, Mars and during astronaut geological field training. It provides both robust spectral libraries to support mineral identification from instrument outputs, and relevant contextualized information on detected minerals.
RESUMEN
We report on evidence for fluid circulation in the upper crust of Mars, which could create environments favorable for life and its development. We investigate the nature of the thumbprint terrains covering part of Arcadia Planitia in the Martian northern hemisphere. Our analytic procedure allowed us to (i) hypothesise a potential relationship between these thumbprint terrains and an inferred underground fracture network that extends to where the clathrate-rich cryosphere contacts with the underlying hydrosphere; (ii) support the hypothesis that these thumbprint terrains are made of fine grained loosely packed materials erupted from deep beneath the subsurface mobilized by water; and (iii) date the thumbprint terrains of Arcadia Planitia to ~370 Ma. We conclude that the study area is an area worthy of astrobiological investigation, bringing water and fine grained sediment from depth to the surface for investigation.
