ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Data Journal

Unravelling the nature of the polyhydrated sulfate deposits on Mars

Abstract: Hydrated sulfates are likely to be the dominant water reservoir in the equatorial region of Mars forming massive stratified deposits. Hence their detailed mineralogical characterisation is likely critical to understand the aqueous history as well as the present-day equatorial water cycle of our neighbouring planet. MgSO4·4H2O is the most promising candidate to form the bulk of the equatorial sulfate deposits whereas FeSO4·4H2O appears to be unstable under martian surface conditions. We have recently carried out Synchrotron XRD of both compounds between 85 ? 300 K, revealing interesting intrinsic patterns of behaviour and differences between the Mg and Fe compounds. To explore this further, we propose to characterise FeSO4·4H2O and MgSO4·4H2O down to 10 K on HRPD and to determine the stability of the aforementioned compounds under simulated martian surface conditions on I11.

Principal Investigator: Professor Karen Hudson-Edwards
Experimenter: Professor Chiu Tang
Experimenter: Dr Rich Crane
Experimenter: Mr Johannes Meusburger
Local Contact: Dr Dominic Fortes

DOI: 10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2010354

ISIS Experiment Number: RB2010354

Publisher: STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source

Data format: RAW/Nexus
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Data Citation

The recommended format for citing this dataset in a research publication is as:
[author], [date], [title], [publisher], [doi]

For Example:
Professor Karen Hudson-Edwards et al; (2020): Unravelling the nature of the polyhydrated sulfate deposits on Mars, STFC ISIS Neutron and Muon Source, https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB2010354

Data is released under the CC-BY-4.0 license.