Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The surfaces of planets and moons are not pristine. The surfaces of planets possessing atmospheres, such as Mars, are modified by various processes, such as asteroid impacts, groundwater movement, ultraviolet radiation, low atmospheric pressures, fluctuating temperatures, and windblown dust. Even planetary bodies which do not have an atmosphere, such as the Moon, are subject to processes that can affect their surface (because of the lack of a protective atmosphere). These processes include micrometeorite and asteroid impacts, irradiation by energetic photons ranging from gamma rays to ultraviolet, and solar wind irradiation and implantation of various ions. All of these processes can alter the surface of a planet, affecting what we see on the surface and obscuring the nature of the unaltered materials that were originally there. By examining a planetary surface we can try to distinguish the ""original"" geological signature from later overprinting. This unraveling is necessary if we hope to determine the conditions under which a planet formed. By looking at the overprinting, we can gain insights into the geological, climatic, and evolutionary history of a planet. This, in turn, tells us about the history of the solar system, since planetary surfaces record events occurring in the solar system, such as the timing and intensity of asteroid impacts. This research program is designed to use information from laboratory- and field-based studies, combined with spacecraft and telescopic observations of planetary surface, to reconstruct the origin and evolution of planetary bodies. Laboratory studies will include planetary materials (e.g., lunar samples, meteorites) and terrestrial analogues, and the field-based studies will include a number of Canadian planetary analogue sites. This research will be facilitated by our state-of-the-art laboratory, where we can reproduce conditions existing on various planetary surfaces.