Crater serves as terrestrial analog for Martian impact structures

Abstract

Researchers try to resolve the mysteries of Mars' geomorphological and climatic past by looking for terrestrial analogs and then explaining the processes of their formation. The Haughton impact crater site on Devon Island in Canada's Nunavut Territory has been the focus of Mars analog studies because of the similarity of its geomorphological characteristics to those observed on Mars and its location in a comparable environment [Lee et al., 1998]. The availability of high‐resolution space data of these characteristics is a necessity in such studies.The most detailed topographic survey on Mars used a non‐imaging laser ranging device called the Mars Observer Laser Altimeter (MOLA) aboard the Mars Global Surveyor Mission [Zuber et al., 1992]. The radar imaging technique selected for this study in the Nunavut Territory spaceborne repeat‐pass Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (INSAR), can render subtle, point‐to‐point details on variations in a coherent, three‐dimensional manner of a seemingly featureless surface for which the traditional optical stereo matching techniques will fail to generate accurate topographic information [Rosen, 2001].