Aeolian Landforms in the ExoMars 2028 Landing Site

Abstract

The ESA ExoMars mission will land at Oxia Planum to search for signs of life on Mars [1, 2] (Fig. 1a). Dust devil tracks, bright bedforms (transverse aeolian ridges [TARs]), and erosive wind-formed ridges (periodic bedrock ridges [PBRs]) have been documented in the landing site [3-6]. In this study, we compare automated and manual mapping of aeolian features in CTX (6 m/pixel), CaSSIS (5 m/pixel) and HiRISE (25 cm/pixel) images in the landing site (Fig. 1) with potential sand fluxes from the NASA Ames GCM [7]. In particular, we focus our attention on bright bedforms, ridges and wind streaks (Fig. 1). Because these features are widespread on Mars, observations made here on PBRs and TARs are also relevant for other areas, such as those explored by Opportunity [8, 9], Curiosity [10], Perseverance [11], and Zhurong [12, 13].