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Judging a Planet by its Cover: Insights into Lunar Crustal Structure and Martian Climate History from Surface Features by MASSACHUSEr rS INTrrlJTE OF TECHN CLOGY Michael M. Sori 20RE B.S. in Mathematics, B.A. in Physics L C I Duke University, 2008 LIBRA RIES Submitted to the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Planetary Science at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY September 2014 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved. Signature redacted Signature of Author: Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences August 1, 2014 Signature redacted Certified by: Maria T. Zuber E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics & Vice President for Research Signature redacted Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: Robert D. van der Hilst Schlumberger Professor of Earth Sciences Head, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences 2 Judging a Planet by its Cover: Insights into Lunar Crustal Structure and Martian Climate History from Surface Features By Michael M Sori Submitted to the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences on June 3, 2014, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract Orbital spacecraft make observations of a planet's surface in the present day, but careful analyses of these data can yield information about deeper planetary structure and history. In this thesis, I use data sets from four orbital robotic spacecraft missions to answer longstanding questions about the crustal structure of the Moon and the climatic history of Mars. In chapter 2, I use gravity data from the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to constrain the quantity and location of hidden volcanic deposits on the Moon. In chapter 3, I combine GRAIL data with elevation measurements from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to investigate the nature of isostatic compensation in the lunar highlands. In chapter 4, I present a new technique for analysis of the Martian polar layered deposits (PLDs). In chapter 5, I apply that technique using images of the PLDs from the MOC and HiRISE instruments aboard the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to constrain their ages and deposition rates. Thesis Supervisor: Maria T. Zuber Title: E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics & Vice President for Research 3 4 Acknowledgements "If you're succeeding at everything you do, you're not thinking big enough." I'm not sure if my advisor remembers giving me that piece of advice years ago, but I've thought of it frequently. Of all the people I have to thank, Maria Zuber clearly tops the list. She expects a lot from those who work for her, but those expectations are matched by a genuine faith in her students to accomplish big things. Maria is one of those people whom you try and soak up as many things as you can learn when you're the same room as her. I've heard her say before that the best thing she does is recruit the right people, but I'll politely disagree and say that the effect she has on her students through her encouragement of big ideas surpasses that. Maria is hardly the only professor that has had a large impact on me in my time at MIT. Taylor Perron has advised my work on Martian polar caps and has taught me countless lessons about science and not-science- things, and shares Maria's faith in his students to take charge of their own work and succeed. The other members of my thesis committee also deserve thanks beyond their agreement to read this document: Ben Weiss has educated me in many ways, most notably by hiring me as his teaching assistant and entrusting me with the lives of undergraduates on our field trip to the Himalayas, and Jim Head has been a figure to look up to for years and a source of advice and inspiration outside of MIT. I thank Rick Binzel for chairing my generals exam committee and for his support of my organization of our department's planetary seminar, and Lindy Elkins-Tanton for being the most influential non-advisor professor I've had at MIT by teaching me invaluable lessons about the nature of scientific research and need to be open-minded in science. I thank Walter Kiefer for inspiring my study of lunar isostasy, and the rest of the GRAIL science team for their constant feedback and inspiration. My fellow planetary science students in the department deserve special thanks. Alex Evans and Peter James have been sources of advice as the veteran students of the lab during my time here. Frank Centinello and Yodit Tewelde are close friends who have always been voices of reason. Anton Ermakov, Zhenliang Tien, and Matthieu Talpe are the younger students in the group who I jokingly have referred to as my children, but have taught me as least as much as I've taught them. Sonia Tikoo has 5 been my mentor of sorts from my first week at MIT, despite my revelation years into school that she's younger than me, and will be a fantastic scientific colleague for the remainder of my scientific career. Elizabeth Bailey was my undergraduate research assistant, will always be remembered as my first "apprentice," and undoubtedly do great things in her graduate career at Cal Tech and beyond. Jason Soderblom, Brandon Johnson, and Katarina Miljkovic have been the postdocs in my group during my time here and have always provided a useful perspective on how to graduate and take the next steps. I thank all of my family and friends and teachers from home and college, but a few people deserve special mention. My parents have provided constant support and have been surprisingly understanding as my "I'll visit Florida many times each year" slowly morphed into "I'll come home for Christmas" over the years. Christine Ryu has almost single- handedly kept me sane over the past five years, and for two people with no training in planetary science, she and Robbie Hunter came up with a pretty awesome and relevant thesis title for me in the middle of a late night cab ride in New York City. Additional people I need to thank include: Jon Grabenstatter and Morgan O'Neill for being my first close friends in the department, Phil Wolfe for being one of my best friends and roommate for more years than I'm willing to admit, Kat Thomas for her sometimes unearned constant faith in me, Roberta Allard and Margaret Lankow for bailing me out of administrative problems more times than I deserved, Javier Matamoros and Erin Koksal for their constant friendship from my first day in Boston, Arthur "Peaches" Olive and Mike Byrne for being my partners-in-crime in my EAPS class, Paul Richardson for being my lab brother, Elena Steponaitis for being a sister to me despite her UNC heritage, Cory Ip for her matzoh ball soup, Alex Toumar for her therapeutic IHOP sessions, Ben Mandler for keeping my EAPS orientation events alive, and many, many, many others who I would list explicitly if I didn't think I already was breaking a record for number of people mentioned in an acknowledgements page. 6 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 5 Table of Contents 7 Chapter 1: Introduction 9 Chapter 2: Gravitational Search for Lunar Cryptomaria 13 Abstract 13 2.1. Introduction 13 2.2. Gravity Maps 17 2.3. Modeling of Igneous Deposits 19 2.4. Results and Discussion 21 2.5. Summary and Conclusions 25 Acknowledgements 26 References 26 Figures and Tables 30 Chapter 3: The Nature of Lunar Isostasy and Implications for Mantle Structure 36 Abstract 36 3.1. Introduction 36 3.2. Elevation-Density Correlations 41 3.3. Geoid to Topography Ratios and Spectrally Weighted Admittances 43 3.4. Geoid to Topography Ratio Results 46 3.5. Discussion 48 3.6. Conclusions 51 Acknowledgements 51 References 51 Figures and Tables 55 Chapter 4: A Procedure for Testing the Significance of Orbital Tuning of the Martian Polar Layered Deposits 63 Abstract 63 4.1. Introduction 63 4.2. Polar Layered Deposit Formation Models 70 4.2.1. Insolation Forcing 70 4.2.2. Ice and Dust Accumulation 72 7 4.2.3. Synthetic Stratigraphic Sequences 73 4.3. Statistical Analysis 75 4.3.1. Tuning by Dynamic Time Warping 75 4.3.2. Monte Carlo Procedure 76 4.4. Results 78 4.4.1. Qualitative Characteristics of Synthetic PLD Stratigraphy 78 4.4.2. Detection of Orbital Signals for Different Accumulation Models 78 4.5. Discussion 81 4.5.1. Feasibility of Identifying a Orbital Signal through Tuning 81 4.5.2. Fraction of Time Preserved in the Polar Cap Stratigraphy 82 4.5.3. Additional Considerations for Modeling PLD Formation 83 4.5.4. Implications for Orbital Tuning of the Observed PLD Stratigraphy 84 4.6. Conclusions 86 Acknowledgements 87 References 87 Figures 91 Chapter 5: Dynamic Time Warping of the Martian PLDs 101 Abstract 101 5.1. Introduction 102 5.2. Stratigraphy 106 5.2.1. MOC Images 106 5.2.2. HiRISE Images 107 5.3. Dynamic Time Warping 108 5.4. Results 112 5.5. Discussion 113 5.6. Conclusions 115 Acknowledgements 116 References 116 Figures and Tables 119 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Future Work 127 6.1. Moon 127 6.2. Mars 129 8 1. Introduction Planetary science is the art of attempting to learn a lot with a little. Any one planetary mission has, at best, a handful of ways to make observations, and missions are often fleeting in time.