New Insights About Mars From the Creation and Analysis of Mars Global Datasets

The past decade has brought a massive influx of new data from Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and equally large volumes will soon be collected from Mercury and the Moon. This influx has created a need for efficient and effective tools to compile, synthesize, and analyze these data. We have attempted to address these needs in two basic directions; first to organize and synthesize the data, and second to create a GIS tools that can ingest and manipulate all of the available planetary data. To date this effort has focused on Mars, but the approach and methodology are easily applied to any solar system object. We have developed a Java-based software and database system called JMARS for creating, compiling, and analyzing global data sets. The effort was begun in direct response to the needs and uses of the Odyssey THEMIS experiment, and the first step has been to produce a global mosaic of 100-m resolution day and night IR imagery from the THEMIS instrument. This effort has required mosaicing and geo-referencing JMARS database includes these global maps, together with global mosaics from Viking and MG MOC, topographic elevation data from MGS MOLA, and global mineral, albedo, and thermal inertia maps from the MGS TES. In addition, the original images from each of these missions can easily imported, as can all of the available numeric data. The JMARS database includes special products such as the image products produced for the Mars Science Laboratory rover landing site selection and MOC THEMS VIS mosaics created for specific sites. The second phase has been the development GIS capabilities to display, layer, combine, and process all of the se data. An example of the analysis capability is the ability to obtain numeric elevation, temperature, albedo, mineral, and thermal inertia profiles on a 100-m resolution base map, while viewing individual high-resolution MOC imagery of any area of interest. JMARS performs basic image processing functions and can import and export data in a wide (and growing) variety of formats. Examples of the scientific applications from this approach include the global mapping of salt deposits, studies of the stratigraphic relationships among compositional units, mapping of specific olivine-bearing rock layers over 1,000's of km, the study of bedrock outcrops in relation to erosional processes, and the ability to investigate processes that produce m-scale morphologies in a regional geologic context.