Overview of the facies and stratigraphy of a distal Delta remnant at the Kodiak butte (Jezero crater, Mars)
Résumé
For more than a year now, the Perseverance rover of the Mars2020 mission has been exploring the Jezero crater in the northern hemisphere of Mars. This landing area was notably selected due to the presence of a large-scale fan-shaped sedimentary edifice in its western part at the mouth of Neretva Vallis (NV, Fig. 1a, e.g., [1]), that was interpreted to be a fossil deltaic system. Upon arrival in the crater in February 2021, remote observation from the ground were performed, allowing to answer this question with long-distance imaging using Mastcam-Z and SuperCam’s Remote Micro-Imager. Indeed, these observations allowed to identify with certainty structures characteristic of a Gilberttype
delta, confirming the fluvio-deltaic origin of this western fan [1].
In this work, we focus on the Kodiak butte (Fig. 1b) situated ~1 km away from the current main delta front. This butte exhibits Gilbert-type structures of bottomsets, foresets and topsets characteristic of the deltaic suite, and as therefore been identified as being a remnant of a past
distal extension of the western delta [1; 2]. This butte was imaged from the east during the earliest part of the mission (Fig. 2a), but we also took advantage of the “Rapid Traverse” route to the delta foot to gather images of its northern-facing side (Fig. 2b), giving us data to study the 3D geometry of the sedimentary rocks that make this butte. Here, we provide an overview of the facies and stacking pattern of the deltaic series observed at Kodiak.
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