Publications by authors named "Danika Wellington"
Article Synopsis
- The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission has analyzed color variations in lacustrine sedimentary rocks on Vera Rubin Ridge, revealing changes from red to purple to gray due to diagenetic alteration.
- The research utilizes visible and near-infrared spectra from Mastcam and ChemCam to link these color variations to different mineralogical properties of hematite, suggesting a process of grain-size coarsening influenced by fluid interactions.
- Understanding these diagenetic processes is vital for assessing past habitability on Mars, as they may have altered sediments and potentially diminished the preservation of biosignatures in ancient Martian environments.
Stable isotope ratios of H, C, and O are powerful indicators of a wide variety of planetary geophysical processes, and for Mars they reveal the record of loss of its atmosphere and subsequent interactions with its surface such as carbonate formation. We report in situ measurements of the isotopic ratios of D/H and (18)O/(16)O in water and (13)C/(12)C, (18)O/(16)O, (17)O/(16)O, and (13)C(18)O/(12)C(16)O in carbon dioxide, made in the martian atmosphere at Gale Crater from the Curiosity rover using the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)'s tunable laser spectrometer (TLS). Comparison between our measurements in the modern atmosphere and those of martian meteorites such as ALH 84001 implies that the martian reservoirs of CO2 and H2O were largely established ~4 billion years ago, but that atmospheric loss or surface interaction may be still ongoing.
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