A new martian crater chronology Virtual Observatory Resource

Authors
  1. Marchi S.
  2. Published by
    CDS
Abstract

Crater chronologies are a fundamental tool to assess the relative and absolute ages of planetary surfaces when direct radiometric dating is not available. Martian crater chronologies are derived from lunar crater spatial densities on terrains with known radiometric ages, and thus they critically depend on the Moon-to-Mars extrapolation. This extrapolation requires knowledge of the time evolution of the impact flux, including contributions from various impactor populations, factors that are not trivially connected to the dynamical evolution of the early Solar System. In this paper, we will present a new Martian crater chronology based on current dynamical models, and consider the main sources of uncertainties (e.g., impactor size-frequency distribution; dynamical models with late and early instabilities, etc.). The resulting "envelope" of Martian crater chronologies significantly differs from previous chronologies. The new Martian crater chronology is discussed using two interesting applications: Jezero crater's dark terrain (relevant to the NASA Mars 2020 mission) and the southern heavily cratered highlands. Our results indicate that Jezero's dark terrain may have formed ~3.1Ga, i.e., up to 0.5Gyr older than previously thought. In addition, available crater chronologies (including our own) overestimate the number of craters larger than 150km on the southern highlands, suggesting either that large craters have been efficiently erased over Martian history or that dynamical models need further refinement. Further, our chronology constrains the age of Isidis basin to be 4.05-4.2Ga and that of the Borealis basin to be 4.35-4.40Ga; these are predictions that can be tested with future sample and return missions.

Keywords
  1. solar-system
  2. solar-system-planets
Bibliographic source Bibcode
2021AJ....161..187M
See also HTML
https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/161/187
IVOA Identifier IVOID
ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/161/187
Document Object Identifer DOI
doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.51610187

Access

Web browser access HTML
https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/161/187
https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/161/187
http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/161/187
IVOA Table Access TAP
https://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tap
Run SQL-like queries with TAP-enabled clients (e.g., TOPCAT).

History

2021-09-23T06:38:17Z
Resource record created
2021-09-23T06:38:17Z
Created
2022-03-16T11:45:44Z
Updated

Contact

Name
CDS support team
Postal Address
CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France
E-Mail
cds-question@unistra.fr