Abstract The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity each carried a thermal infrared (IR) instrument called the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) used to determine rock and soil composition and thermophysical properties. In this work, we investigate how rover operations affect soil thermophysical properties by analyzing Spirit Mini-TES observations of both disturbed and undisturbed soils in Gusev crater. Observations of one location disturbed by rover wheels and two nearby undisturbed locations were acquired multiple times per sol over sols 172–174 and were compared with a thermal model to derive quantitative thermal inertia. We found that the disturbed soils have higher average thermal inertia and lower albedos than nearby undisturbed soils. These results are consistent with an increase in apparent particle size caused by the fine particulate, high-albedo airfall dust layer that coats all undisturbed surfaces in Gusev crater being pressed and/or mixed with the darker, coarser basaltic material beneath. However, we note that variations in slope and azimuth between each Mini-TES footprint likely introduce uncertainties in our derived thermal inertia, highlighting the complexity of modeling soil thermophysical properties at the rover scale. This work is directly relevant to upcoming lunar surface missions that will carry thermal IR instruments (e.g., Lunar-VISE, L-CIRiS, and LAFORGE). By analyzing how rover operations change the thermophysical properties of planetary surfaces, we aim to inform strategies for interpreting regolith properties in planetary environments where both natural and mission-induced surface modifications occur.
Byron et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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