Mars Odyssey neutron data: 1. Data processing and models of water-equivalent-hydrogen distribution

For more than 7 years, the Los Alamos built Mars Odyssey Neutron Spectrometer (MONS) has measured the neutron albedo from Mars in three consecutive energy bands: thermal, epithermal, and fast neutron ranges. This paper synthesizes the teamwork on the optimization of the signal extraction, the corrections for observational biases and instrument specific characteristics. Results are presented for neutron time series with an emphasis on seasonal variations at the poles. Frost-free data are mapped on to the surface, and the apparent random nature of the counting-rate distribution per pixel is analyzed: for epithermal neutrons, the relative standard deviation is less than 0.5% equatorward of 45 and up to 2.5% above this latitude limit; for thermal neutrons it is 1% and 2.5% respectively; and for fast neutrons it is 3% and 5.5%, respectively. New science results are obtained with regards to the distribution of water-equivalent hydrogen (WEH) on Mars. Under the assumption of a single uniform distribution of hydrogen with depth, WEH abundances range from 2% near the equator to 80% at the poles, with +/- 2% to 4.5% relative error bars. A best approximation to a two-layered global distribution of a lower-level hydrogen-rich substrate beneath an upper layer of varying thicknesses is generated using an average hydration level of an upper layer of 2 wt %, derived in the paper by Feldman et al. (2011). Such results are discussed and compared with regard to previous publications on the MONS instrument.