Characterizing the Bedrock Mineralogy of Dusty Regions of Mars Using Remote Sensing of Low Albedo

Introduction: Much of the Martian surface is obscured by dust. The bright and ubiquitous nature of this dust makes remote sensing spectral analysis of the underlying surface materials difficult or impossible. As a result, the composition and mineralogy of the substrate materials in large areas of Mars have yet to be characterized in detail. Still, even in the dustiest regions of Mars, small holes or "windows" a few to a few tens of kilometers in size can be identified where the dust cover is substantially thinner or non-existent. These windows through the dust provide an opportunity to analyze the composition of potentially local sediments and/or bedrock. In this study, we are using a combination of imaging and spectroscopic data sets from the Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES), the Mars Express Observatoire pour la Mineralogie, l'Eau, les Glaces et l'Activité (OMEGA), the Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) to identify and characterize the mineralogy of such windows in some of the dustiest regions on Mars. Here we focus on 13 such windows identified in Amazonis Planitia, and on the distribution of ferrous minerals in local low albedo substrate/sediments that can potentially be identified in these regions from OMEGA data.