|
Selby Cull
Washington University in St. Louis
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Advisor: Professor Raymond E. Arvidson
Abstract
NASA's Phoenix Lander uncovered two distinctly different types of ice on the northern plains of Mars: a bright, white, soft ice; and a darker, harder ice. Here, we use ground spectra taken of the two types of ice to constrain their compositions. We find that the bright white ice is almost entirely pure water ice. The darker ice is ~70 wt% soil, indicating that it probably formed as pore ice between grains of soil. We conclude that these two types of ice formed in different episodes and types of deposition.
Shelby Cull received a B.A. in Geology from Hampshire College in 2005, an M.S. in Science Writing from MIT in 2006, an M.S. in Earth & Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008, and is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Earth & Planetary Sciences from Washington University in St. Louis. She has served on the Science Teams for the 2008 Mars Phoenix Lander and on the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).
|
