Abstract

Science Opportunities offered by Mercury’s Ice-Bearing Polar Deposits

Highlights

  • Earth-based radar observations of high-backscatter materials provided the first evidence of water ice present at Mercury’s polar regions (e.g., Slade et al, 1992; Harmon and Slade, 1992; Butler et al, 1993; Harmon et al, 2011)

  • The MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft revealed that these radar-bright materials are cold-trapped within permanently shadowed regions (PSRs, e.g., Deutsch et al, 2016; Chabot at al., 2018), where temperatures calculated from measured topography and insolation models are sufficiently cold to sustain water ice (Paige et al, 2013)

  • Our understanding of polar deposits on Mercury has drastically improved over the last decade as a direct result of the MESSENGER mission

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Summary

Introduction

Earth-based radar observations of high-backscatter materials provided the first evidence of water ice present at Mercury’s polar regions (e.g., Slade et al, 1992; Harmon and Slade, 1992; Butler et al, 1993; Harmon et al, 2011). The distinct reflectance properties of some of Mercury’s polar deposits indicate that they are exposed directly at the surface (e.g., Neumann et al, 2013; Chabot et al, 2016; Deutsch et al, 2017), providing favorable observation opportunities and direct access to thick and relatively pristine material (e.g., Butler et al, 1993; Harmon, 2007; Black et al, 2010; Lawrence et al, 2013; Rubanenko et al, 2019; Susorney et al, 2019), whereas at other deposits, the water ice is covered by frozen organic-rich volatiles (Zhang and Paige, 2009; Delitsky et al, 2017) (Fig. 1). Addressing the top-level science questions outlined below has major implications for understanding the nature of volatiles on Mercury, as well as the sources, evolution, and inventory of volatiles in the solar system through time

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