# Morpho-stratigraphic map of Jezero crater landing area

Axel Noblet¹, Gwénaël Caravaca¹, Stéphane Le Mouélic¹, Marion Massé¹, Nicolas Mangold¹

¹Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique, CNRS UMR6112, Université de Nantes, Université d'Angers, 44322 Nantes, France

Corresponding author: G. Caravaca, gwenael.caravaca@univ-nantes.fr

The rover Perseverance of the Mars2020 mission will depart to Mars in July 2020 and land on Mars in February 2021. Its landing site, Jezero crater, has been selected after a series of workshops that involved the whole scientific community (Grant et al., 2018). Jezero crater is a paleolake as deduced from the presence of two fan deltas, inlet and outlet valleys (Fassett and Head, 2005). Jezero crater contains a huge number of aqueous landforms (fluvial and lacustrine sediments) and a series of key mineralogical detections, including hydrated silicates and carbonates (Ehlmann et al., 2008; Goudge et al., 2015).

The geologic map delivered here (Fig. 1) has been produced using public orbital images available on the Planetary Data System (PDS), in particular the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Context (CTX) imagers, both on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Interpretations are based on visual imagery only, taking into account the orbital facies (layers, massive, etc.) and their stratigraphic relationships, the texture and albedo of terrains, without taking into account mineralogical data. The area studied here is centered around the landing area comprising the east of the fan delta and the west of the crater floor. The map has been done at 1:10,000 scale, and is available for further visualization projects (such as integration in VR, e.g. Caravaca et al., 2020). Figure 2 presents the legend for the map (Fig. 1) and a complete list of all units. The main units mapped here consist of:

- The ~40 m thick fan delta (D- in blue colors) separated in sub-units corresponding to distinct textures or layer types, interpreted as fluvial and lacustrine deposition;

- The crater floor unit (DT- and LT- in orange to light-pink colors) separated in sub-units depending on their albedo (dark-toned and light-toned) and their texture (fractured, smooth), interpreted as either volcanic or eolian filling;

- The mottled terrain unit (MT- purple colors) corresponding to sedimentary deposits eroded in hills and buttes and present on the crater margins and locally on its floor, interpreted to be sedimentary or volcano-sedimentary deposition;

- The crater wall (W- in brown colors) corresponding to undifferentiated crustal material from the crater wall excavated by the impact;

- The inlet valley (Neretva Vallis, V- in grey-blue colors) corresponding to the fluvial erosion and local deposition of the inlet valley;

- The residual buttes (B- in green colors) corresponding to sedimentary deposits preserved in buttes, interpreted as either remnants of the main fan delta or residual buttes from former sedimentary bodies;

- Smooth units (D and W-D, in grey colors) with local eolian bedforms, corresponding to eolian mantling and debris-covered hillslopes.
<figure><img src="image_1.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Geologic map (1:10,000) of the western fan delta and western part of the crater floor of Jezero crater.</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: Complete list of units and legend for the map presented in Figure 1.</figcaption></figure>
## Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the European Commission Research Executive Agency under the Horizon 2020 "PlanMap" project (grant n° 776276). Data used in this study are publicly available on the Planetary Data System (https://pds.nasa.gov), and on Caltech's Murray Lab website (http://murray-lab.caltech.edu/Mars2020/).

## References:

Caravaca G., S. Le Mouélic, N. Mangold, J. L'Haridon, L. Le Deit, M. Massé (2020). 3D digital outcrop model reconstruction of the Kimberley outcrop (Gale crater, Mars) and its integration into Virtual Reality for simulated geological analysis. Planetary Space Science. DOI: 10.1016/j.pss.2019.104808.

Ehlmann, B.L., Mustard, J. F., Fassett, C. I., Schon, S. C., Head III, J. W., Des Marais, D. J., Grant, J. A. and Murchie, S. L. (2008). Clay minerals in delta deposits and organic preservation potential on Mars. Nature Geoscience. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo207.

Fassett, C.I., and Head, J.W. (2005). Fluvial sedimentary deposits on Mars: ancient deltas in a crater lake in the Nili Fossae region. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1029/2005GL023456.

Goudge, T.A., Mustard, J.F., Head, J.W., Fassett, C.I., Wiseman, S.M. (2015). Assessing the mineralogy of the watershed and fan deposits of the Jezero crater paleolake system, Mars. JGR Planets. DOI: 10.1002/2014JE004782.

Grant, J. A., Golombek, M. P., Wilson, S. A., Farley, K. A., Williford, K. H., Chen, A. (2018). The science process for selecting the landing site for the rover 2020 rover. Planetary Space Science. DOI: 10.1016/j.pss.2018.07.001.
# Appendices

Appendix 1: List of files provided with this archive (associated database and projection subfiles are not listed).

- Geologic_map_of_Jezero_crater.pdf: this document

- Geologic_map_of_Jezero_crater.png: Image file preview of the map

- Geologic_map_of_Jezero_crater legend.png: Image file preview of the legend of the map

- Jezero_delta_map.mxd: ArcMap 10.4 GIS project file

Included in the ArcMap (10.4) project:

<table><thead><tr><th>Group</th><th>Layer</th><th>Associated layer file (.lyr)</th><th>Data type (raster/vec tor)</th><th>File (relative to "Home" folder in ArcMap)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">Geological Maps</td><td>Landing_ellipse</td><td>Geological maps.lyr</td><td>Vector (shapefile)</td><td>/Geologicals/Delta_Map/Delta_map. shp</td></tr><tr><td>Delta-map</td><td>Geological maps.lyr</td><td>Vector (shapefile)</td><td>/Landing_ellipse_19/Landing_ellipse.shp</td></tr><tr><td>Orthoimages</td><td>CTX_Ortho_Jezero_delta.tif</td><td>Orthoimages.lyr</td><td>Raster (GeoTIFF)</td><td>/CTX/CTX_Ortho_Jezero_delta.tif</td></tr></tbody></table>