Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences

The Korean Space Science Society (한국우주과학회)
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Investigation of the Characteristic Nighttime Temperature of Potential Caves on Mars

  • Park, Nuri (School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University) ;
  • Hong, Ik-Seon (Department of Astronomy, Space Science, and Geology, Chungnam National University) ;
  • Jung, Jongil (Department of Astronomy, Space Science, and Geology, Chungnam National University)
  • Received : 2022.11.29
  • Accepted : 2022.12.13
  • Published : 2022.12.15
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Abstract

By providing an environment where energetic particles and micrometeorites can not penetrate, caves on Mars may serve as a human shelter in future Mars explorations. More than 1,000 cave entrance candidates have been detected; however, their physical characteristics that can be utilized in detecting more candidates have not been explored in detail. In this paper, we explore the nighttime temperature of 100 cave entrance candidates and their surrounding areas to investigate 1) the nighttime temperature tendencies relative to their surrounding areas and 2) the extent of these temperature differences. We find that 79% of the cave entrance candidates exhibit higher temperatures than the surrounding areas, and 59% show a temperature difference over 20K, suggesting that the cave entrances may generally show higher temperatures than the surrounding areas during the nighttime.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (NRF-2022R1A2C1092602).

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