Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Understanding ice on Mars and worlds in the outer solar system is a major priority for the space community as outlined in the 2022 NASA Decadal Survey, which sets space exploration priorities for the next 10 years. Dr. Smith proposes to investigate several aspects of ice and climate on Mars, from the large scale to the small, and then extend these investigations into other parts of the Solar System, including Pluto and Neptune's moon Triton. The Martian climate is simpler than terrestrial climate because there are no oceans and no known biology, making for a more pristine natural laboratory with fewer variables. However, understanding Martian climate presents many challenges. Mars is distant, and observations of the surface and atmosphere are limited to observations from the robotic missions that have incomplete coverage. This limited amount of data must be complemented by studies back on Earth. The first and overarching goal of the proposed research program is to characterize modern and historic atmospheric and ice related processes on Mars to increase our knowledge of the climate of the planet. Each component of the program studies an aspect of the climate on time scales ranging from one day to climate cycles of hundreds of thousands of years. The second goal is to perform glaciological modeling on icy worlds in the outer solar system. Pluto and Triton have atmospheres composed of primarily nitrogen gas, and both experience nitrogen glaciers – similar to the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars that gives rise to CO2 glaciers. The laboratory techniques being developed now will provide the tools to study these interactions for N2 ice in the outer Solar System. In this CRC research program, there will be six lines of investigation: 1) Subsurface Mapping of Mars, 2) Laboratory Investigations of CO2 and 3) N2 ices, 4) Glacial Modeling (Mars and Pluto), 5) Radar Development, 6) Radar Demonstration and Permafrost Studies, and 7) Wind Modeling. Each investigation will advance the state of knowledge for processes on Mars or Pluto beyond the current state. Many of these topics are not being studied anywhere else in the world, making York University a hub of new investigations. Additionally, as his laboratory and glacial modeling techniques improve, the expanded capabilities will enable investigations of worlds in the outer Solar System, bringing new worlds to Planetary Science in Canada.