Soil Diversity and Hydration as Observed by ChemCam at Gale Crater, Mars

P.-Y. Meslin, O. Gasnault, O. Forni, S. Schröder, A. Cousin, G. Berger, S. M. Clegg, J. Lasue, S. Maurice, V. Sautter, S. Le Mouélic, R. C. Wiens, C. Fabre, W. Goetz, D. Bish, N. Mangold, B. Ehlmann, N. Lanza, A.-M. Harri, R. Anderson, E. Rampe, T. H. McConnochie, P. Pinet, D. Blaney, R. Léveillé, D. Archer, B. Barraclough, S. Bender, D. Blake, J. G. Blank, N. Bridges, B. C. Clark, L. DeFlores, D. Delapp, G. Dromart, M. D. Dyar, M. Fisk, B. Gondet, J. Grotzinger, K. Herkenhoff, J. Johnson, J.-L. Lacour, Y. Langevin, L. Leshin, E. Lewin, M. B. Madsen, N. Melikechi, A. Mezzacappa, M. A. Mischna, J. E. Moores, H. Newsom, A. Ollila, R. Perez, N. Renno, J.-B. Sirven, R. Tokar, M. de la Torre, L. d’Uston, D. Vaniman, A. Yingst, Osku Kemppinen, Michelle Minitti, David Cremers, James F. Bell, Lauren Edgar, Jack Farmer, Austin Godber, Meenakshi Wadhwa, Danika Wellington, Ian McEwan, Claire Newman, Mark Richardson, Antoine Charpentier, Laurent Peret, Penelope King, Gerald Weigle, Mariek Schmidt, Shuai Li, Ralph Milliken, Kevin Robertson, Vivian Sun, Michael Baker, Christopher Edwards, Kenneth Farley, Jennifer Griffes, Hayden Miller, Megan Newcombe, Cedric Pilorget, Melissa Rice, Kirsten Siebach, Katie Stack, Edward Stolper, Claude Brunet, Victoria Hipkin, Geneviève Marchand, Pablo Sobrón Sánchez, Laurent Favot, George Cody, Andrew Steele, Lorenzo Flückiger, David Lees, Ara Nefian, Mildred Martin, Marc Gailhanou, Frances Westall, Guy Israël, Christophe Agard, Julien Baroukh, Christophe Donny, Alain Gaboriaud, Philippe Guillemot, Vivian Lafaille, Eric Lorigny, Alexis Paillet, René Pérez, Muriel Saccoccio, Charles Yana, Carlos Armiens‐Aparicio, Javier Caride Rodríguez, Isaías Carrasco Blázquez, Felipe Gómez Gómez, Javier Gómez-Elvira, Sebastian Hettrich, Alain Lepinette Malvitte, Mercedes Marín Jiménez, Jesús Martínez-Frías, Javier Martín-Soler, F. Javier Martín-Torres, Antonio Molina Jurado, Luis Mora-Sotomayor, Guillermo Muñoz Caro, Sara Navarro López, Verónica Peinado-González, Jorge Pla-García, José Antonio Rodriguez Manfredi, Julio José Romeral-Planelló, Sara Alejandra Sans Fuentes, Eduardo Sebastian Martinez, Josefina Torres Redondo, Roser Urqui-O’Callaghan, María-Paz Zorzano Mier, Steve Chipera, Patrick Mauchien, Heidi Manning, Alberto Fairén, Alexander Hayes, Jonathan Joseph, Steven Squyres, Robert Sullivan, Peter Thomas, Audrey Dupont, Angela Lundberg, Julia DeMarines, David Grinspoon, Günther Reitz, Benito Prats, Evgeny Atlaskin, Maria Genzer, Harri Haukka, Henrik Kahanpää, Janne Kauhanen, Osku Kemppinen, Mark Paton, Jouni Polkko, Walter Schmidt, Tero Siili, James Wray, Mary Beth Wilhelm, Franck Poitrasson, Kiran Patel, Stephen Gorevan, Stephen Indyk, Gale Paulsen, Sanjeev Gupta, Juergen Schieber, Claude Geffroy, David Baratoux, Alain Cros, Qiu-Mei Lee, Etienne Pallier, Yann Parot, Mike Toplis, Will Brunner, Ezat Heydari, Cherie Achilles, Dorothy Oehler, Brad Sutter, Michel Cabane, David Coscia, Guy Israël, Cyril Szopa, François Robert, Marion Nachon, Arnaud Buch, Fabien Stalport, Patrice Coll, Pascaline François, François Raulin, Samuel Teinturier, James Cameron, Robert Dingler, Ryan Steele Jackson, Stephen Johnstone, Cynthia Little, Tony Nelson, Richard B. 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Dworkin, Jennifer Eigenbrode, Melissa Floyd, Caroline Freissinet, James Garvin, Daniel Glavin, Daniel Harpold, Andrea Jones, Paul Mahaffy, David K. Martin, Amy McAdam, Alexander Pavlov, Eric Raaen, Michael D. Smith, Jennifer Stern, Florence Tan, Melissa Trainer, Michael Meyer, Arik Posner, Mary Voytek, Robert C. Anderson, Andrew Aubrey, Luther W. Beegle, Alberto Behar, David Brinza, Fred Calef, Lance Christensen, Joy A. Crisp, Jason Feldman, Sabrina Feldman, Gregory Flesch, Joel Hurowitz, Insoo Jun, Didier Keymeulen, Justin Maki, John Michael Morookian, Timothy Parker, Betina Pavri, Marcel Schoppers, Aaron Sengstacken, John J. Simmonds, Nicole Spanovich, Ashwin R. Vasavada, Christopher R. Webster, Albert Yen, Francis Cucinotta, John H. Jones, Douglas Ming, Richard V. Morris, Paul Niles, Thomas Nolan, Leon Radziemski, Daniel Berman, Eldar Noe Dobrea, Rebecca M. E. 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The ChemCam instrument, which provides insight into martian soil chemistry at the submillimeter scale, identified two principal soil types along the Curiosity rover traverse: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type. The mafic soil component is representative of widespread martian soils and is similar in composition to the martian dust. It possesses a ubiquitous hydrogen signature in ChemCam spectra, corresponding to the hydration of the amorphous phases found in the soil by the CheMin instrument. This hydration likely accounts for an important fraction of the global hydration of the surface seen by previous orbital measurements. ChemCam analyses did not reveal any significant exchange of water vapor between the regolith and the atmosphere. These observations provide constraints on the nature of the amorphous phases and their hydration.