The NASA Haughton-Mars Project. :: essays research papers

The NASA Haughton-Mars Project.A thousand miles or so from the Earths North pole lies our planets largest uninhabited island, Devon Island. Devon Island is the largest uninhabited island on Earth, with a surface area of approximately 66,800 km2. Its geology presents two major provinces a dull (presently 1.3 km) subhorizontal sequence of Paleozoic (Cambrian to Devonian) marine sedimentary rocks dominated by carbonates (dolomite and limest unmatched) forming type of the Arctic Platform and a Precambrian crystalline (gneissic) basement lying unconformably under the stack of marine sediments, forming part of the Canadian Shield. The Paleozoic sediments present a gentle dip of approximately 4 towards the west. The flat-topped plateau characterizing practically of Devon Islands surface is an old erosional surface (peneplain) exposing sediments of increasing age towards the east. Devon Island is home to one of the highest-latitude impact structures known on Earth, Haughton Crater. At 20 kilometers in diameter the crater formed 23 million years ago, at the commencement exercise of the Miocene, when an asteroid or a comet collided with our planet. Little imagination is required to intend oneself on Mars when exploring Devon Island. Many features and sites there are strikingly resounding of the Martian landscape, from barren rocky blockfields to intricate valley networks, from precipitous whirl canyons to recent gully systems on their slopes. We come here to understand whether this resemblance is entirely a coincidence or whether there are common key causes. Did some of the processes that shaped Devon Island also operate on Mars?The tendency that struck Devon Island was perhaps 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) in diameter. Coming in at cosmic speeds, the impactor delivered a pulse of energy equivalent to vitamin C million kilotons of TNT. In so doing, it produced a blinding flash of let down followed by a monumental air blast that flattened the surroundings, obliter ating approximately all life several hundred kilometers around. As the impactor itself blended into the buttocks rocks and vanished as a superheated gas, a colossal shock wave spread out into the subsurface. Rocks were crushed, melted, vaporized, and ejected. Soon, a gaping crater 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) wide and 1.7 kilometers (1 mile) deep appeared, unless to shallow out moments later as its unstable walls collapsed inwards. As the sparge cleared, a smoldering hole filled with a vast consortium of chunky molten carbonates appeared. Haughton Crater was born. Early research efforts at Haughton pore on studies of the crater itself with investigations into a possible Mars analog shift remaining unexplored.