Geodaysit 2023

Here we show some preliminary results of the hyperspectral investigation on a paleohydrological environment, using ASI PRISMA data (Caporusso et al., 2020), with the scope of subsequently comparing them with similar environments on Mars (Zinzi et al., 2023).
The datasets investigated are located in the Gobi Desert. The first areas were selected on the basis of the availability of mineralogical data on rocks revealing a composition of quartz, albite, phyllosilicates and sporadic calcite by means of X-ray diffraction (Sekine et al., 2020).
Keeping into account that quartz and albite do not show strong unambiguous diagnostic absorption features in the PRISMA spectral range, we aim at investigating whether their occurrence can be deduced from the reflectance values and the whole spectrum.
On the contrary, phyllosilicates were found in PRISMA data, in particular, their occurrences seem to be attested by the absorption associated to Al-OH bond around 2.19 micrometers in the structure of illite, smectite, kaolinite.
Up to now, we did not observe carbonate-related absorptions in the investigated ROIs. This can be due to neglectable abundance of carbonates at the scale of PRISMA, but this hypothesis needs further insights.
However, the study will include another possible delta in the Gobi area probably characterized by basaltic composition (Mason et al., 2021 and references therein) and therefore more similar to Jezero delta mineralogy.
We will proceed in the identification and mapping of minerals in these areas, in the view of comparison of water related environments on Earth and Mars.

References

Caporusso et al., 2020. IEEE IGARSS 2020 Proceedings. 3282–3285.
Zinzi et al., 2023. Abstract XVIII Congresso Scienze Planetarie, Perugia.
Sekine et al., 2020. Minerals, 10(9):792.
Mason et al., 2021, abs#1664, 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.