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The search for evidence of water on Mars has been a principal objective during NASA's current 2003 -2004 series of Mars Exploration Rover (MER) missions. The missions were designed to explore the Martian surface for signs, past or present, of liquid water. However, some attention has also been given to other erosional and landscape processes that may be inferred from the abundance of images now available. On Earth, the main physical weathering processes are frost weathering, salt weathering, and wetting and drying. These processes commonly result in exfoliation, spalling, and granular disintegration. Some of the forms present on the Martian surface also suggest that chemical weathering has taken place. There are also diverse aeolian processes that, in addition to dune forms, result in small abrasion forms on exposed rocks. NASA's recent MER missions imaged numerous micro-and mesoscale features on the surface of the planet, many resembling the results of these terrestrial processes. Using imagery collected by NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers, we describe and categorise features using a basic geomorphic classification and compare a number of these features with possible Earth analogues. Our comparisons show that many of the features on the surface of Mars could be formed by processes common on Earth. We conclude that in most cases it is not necessary to seek complex or exotic processes to explain Martian geomorphology.

The Earth’s surface comprises minerals diagnostic of weathering, deposition and erosion. The first continental-scale mineral maps generated from an imaging satellite with spectral bands designed to measure clays, quartz and other minerals were released in 2012 for Australia. Here we show how these satellite mineral maps improve our understanding of weathering, erosional and depositional processes in the context of changing weather, climate and tectonics. The clay composition map shows how kaolinite has developed over tectonically stable continental crust in response to deep weathering during northwardly migrating tropical conditions from 45 to 10 Ma. The same clay composition map, in combination with one sensitive to water content, enables the discrimination of illite from montmorillonite clays that typically develop in large depositional environments over thin (sinking) continental crust such as the Lake Eyre Basin. Cutting across these clay patterns are sandy deserts that developed <10 Ma and are well mapped using another satellite product sensitive to the particle size of silicate minerals. This product can also be used to measure temporal gains/losses of surface clay caused by periodic wind erosion (dust) and rainfall inundation (flood) events. The accuracy and information content of these satellite mineral maps are validated using published data.

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An integrated analysis of both airborne and field short-wave infrared hyperspectral measurements was used in conjunction with conventional field mapping techniques to map hydrothermal alteration in the central portion of the Mount Painter Inlier in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. The airborne hyperspectral data show the spatial distribution of spectrally distinct minerals occurring as primary minerals and as weathering and alteration products. Field spectral measurements, taken with a portable infrared mineral analyzer spectrometer and supported by thin-section analyses, were used to verify the mineral maps and enhance the level of information obtainable from the airborne data. Hydrothermal alteration zones were identified and mapped separately from the background weathering signals. A main zone of alteration, coinciding with the Paralana Fault zone, was recognized, and found to contain kaolinite, muscovite, biotite, and K-feldspar. A small spectral variation associated with a ring-like feature around Mount Painter was tentatively determined to be halloysite and interpreted to represent a separate hydrothermal fluid and fluid source, and probably a separate system. The older parts of the alteration system are tentatively dated as Permo-Carboniferous. The remote sensing of alteration at Mount Painter confirms that hyperspectral imaging techniques can produce accurate mineralogical maps with significant details that can be used to identify and map hydrothermal activity. Application of hyperspectral surveys such as that conducted at Mount Painter would be likely to provide similar detail about putative hydrothermal deposits on Mars.