Small crater relaxation and ice abundance at high northern latitudes on Mars

The cold, northern high-latitudes around the Phoenix landing site feature a population of small and very shallow craters known as palimpsest craters or boulder halos that could give insight into the subsurface ice content of the region. Notably there is also a split in the population by the size of craters that feature blocky ejecta: the smallest crater sizes that are <200-350 m in diameter typically do not feature blocky ejecta, while craters larger than this size range do. This has been interpreted as there being a less consolidated layer of mainly ice that sits over a more consolidated layer containing more silicate material from which the larger craters are able to excavate the blocky ejecta. This work focuses on determining whether these 200 m - 1 km shallow craters could be indicative of topographic relaxation due to substantial ice in the subsurface, with goals to determine the subsurface structure and most importantly the amount of ice present through its abundance and depth extent. We use finite element modeling of axisymmetric simple craters, employing the most recent characterizations of solid-state creep for water ice, silicate-rich ice, and CO2 ice, to determine the timescales and magnitudes of relaxation accommodated by an icy single or multiple material layered subsurface to determine the environment's properties. Our models include a 35 m thick layer of pure ice (water, or water and CO2) over a mobile substrate of particulate rich water ice of variable thicknesses able to accommodate relaxation for larger crater sizes up to 1 km in diameter. Our findings demonstrate that relaxation is able to account for significant flattening of crater topography, though for smaller craters the relaxation is incomplete, leaving about half the depth. The accommodated relaxation of our modeled subsurface does imply associated increases in ice abundances of 4 to 10 times greater than is currently estimated for the region, dependent on the extent of the mobile layer.

Automated summary

The study focuses on the shallow craters ranging from 200 m to 1 km in diameter in the cold, northern high-latitudes around the Phoenix landing site. These craters could provide insights into the subsurface ice content of the region. The researchers used finite element modeling to determine if these craters are indicative of topographic relaxation due to substantial ice in the subsurface. The findings suggest that there may be a higher abundance of ice in the region than currently estimated.