Issue |
A&A
Volume 612, April 2018
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A112 | |
Number of page(s) | 13 | |
Section | Planets and planetary systems | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732367 | |
Published online | 08 May 2018 |
New measurements of D/H on Mars using EXES aboard SOFIA
1
LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, PSL University, CNRS, UPMC, Univ. Denis Diderot,
92195
Meudon, France
2
Dept. of Physics, University of California Davis,
CA
95616, USA
3
SwRI,
Div. 15,
San Antonio,
TX
78228, USA
4
LATMOS, IPSL,
75252
Paris Cedex 05, France
5
Dept. of Climate and Space Sciences, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor,
MI
48109-2143, USA
6
Belgium Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB),
1180
Brussels, and Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique,
1000
Brussels, Belgium
7
Kyoto-Sangio University,
Kyoto
603-8555, Japan
Received:
27
November
2017
Accepted:
21
January
2018
The global D/H ratio on Mars is an important measurement for understanding the past history of water on Mars; locally, through condensation and sublimation processes, it is a possible tracer of the sources and sinks of water vapor on Mars. Measuring D/H as a function of longitude, latitude and season is necessary for determining the present averaged value of D/H on Mars. Following an earlier measurement in April 2014, we used the Echelon Cross Echelle Spectrograph (EXES) instrument on board the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) facility to map D/H on Mars on two occasions, on March 24, 2016 (Ls = 127°), and January 24, 2017 (Ls = 304°), by measuring simultaneously the abundances of H2O and HDO in the 1383–1391 cm−1 range (7.2 μm). The D/H disk-integrated values are 4.0 (+0.8, −0.6) × Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW) and 4.5 (+0.7, −0.6) × VSMOW, respectively, in agreement with our earlier result. The main result of this study is that there is no evidence of strong local variations in the D/H ratio nor for seasonal variations in the global D/H ratio between northern summer and southern summer.
Key words: planets and satellites: atmospheres / planets and satellites: individual: Mars
© ESO 2018
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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