Recent discoveries of anomalously bright radar reflections below the Mars South Polar Layered Deposit (SPLD) have sparked new speculation that liquid water may be present below the ice cap. The reflections, discovered in data acquired by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) on board the Mars Express orbiter, were interpreted as reflections from damp materials or even subsurface ponds and lakes similar to those found beneath Earth's ice sheets. Recent studies, however, have questioned the feasibility of melting and maintaining liquid water below the SPLD. Herein, we compare radar simulations to MARSIS observations in order to present an alternate hypothesis: that the bright reflections are the result of interference between multiple layer boundaries, with no liquid water present. This new interpretation is more consistent with known conditions on modern Mars.
We use observations from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) of the north polar cap during late summer for two Martian years, to monitor the complete summer cycle of albedo and water ice grain size in order to place quantitative limits of the amount of water ice deposited in late summer. We establish here for the first time the complete spring to summer cycle of water ice grain sizes on the north polar cap. The apparent grain sizes grow until Ls=132, when they appear to shrink again, until they are obscured at the end of summer by the north polar hood. Under the as…
We study the 2018 Martian Global DustStorm (GDS 2018) over the Southern Polar Region using images obtained by the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board Mars Express during June and July 2018. Dust penetrated into the polar cap region but never covered the cap completely, and its spatial distribution was nonhomogeneous and rapidly changing. However, we detected long but narrow aerosol curved arcs with a length of 2,000-3,000 km traversing part of the cap and crossing the terminator into the night side. Tracking discrete dust clouds allowed measurements of their motions that were towards the t…
The polar condensation/sublimation of CO2, that involve about one fourth of the atmosphere mass, is the major Martian climatic cycle. Early observations in visible and thermal infrared have shown that the sublimation of the Seasonal South Polar Cap (SSPC) is not symmetric around the geographic South Pole. Here we use observations by OMEGA/Mars Express in the near-infrared to detect unambiguously the presence of CO2 at the surface, and to estimate albedo. Second, we estimate the sublimation of CO2 released in the atmosphere and show that there is a two-step process. From Ls=180° to 220°, the su…
The spectral signature of water ice was observed on Martian south polar cap in 2004 by the Observatoire pour l'Mineralogie, l'Eau les Glaces et l'Activite (OMEGA) (Bibring et al., 2004). Three years later, the OMEGA instrument was used to discover water ice deposited during southern summer on the polar cap (Langevin et al., 2007). However, temporal and spatial variations of these water ice signatures have remained unexplored, and the origins of these water deposits remains an important scientific question. To investigate this question, we have used observations from the Compact Reconnaissance …
Mars' transition from an early "warm and wet" to the "cold and dry" environment left fingerprints on the geological record of fluvial activity on Mars. The morphological and mineralogical observations of aqueous activity provided varying constraints on the condition and duration of liquid water on martian surface. In this study, we surveyed the mineralogy of martian alluvial fans and deltas and investigated the hydrated silica-bearing deposits associated with these landforms. Using CRISM data, we identified 35 locations across Mars with hydrated silica in proximity to fan/deltas, where the spe…
The paper deals with the investigation of the Mars subsurface by means of data collected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding working at few MHz frequencies. A data processing strategy, which combines a simple inversion model and an accurate procedure for data selection is presented. This strategy permits to mitigate the theoretical and practical difficulties of the inverse problem arising because of the inaccurate knowledge of the parameters regarding both the scenario under investigation and the radiated electromagnetic field impinging on the Mars surface. The re…
We report on the interannual variability of the atmospheric ice/dust cycle in the Martian polar regions for Mars Years 28-30. We used CRISM emission phase function measurements to derive atmospheric dust optical depths and data from the MARCI instrument to derive atmospheric water ice optical depths. We have used autocorrelation and cross correlation functions in order to quantify the degree to which dust and ice are correlated throughout both polar regions during Mars Years 28-29. We find that in the south polar region, dust has the tendency to "self clear", demonstrated by negative autocorre…
The Mars Atmosphere-Ice Coupler MAIC-2 is a simple, latitudinal model, which consists of a set of parameterisations for the surface temperature, the atmospheric water transport and the surface mass balance (condensation minus evaporation) of water ice. It is driven directly by the orbital parameters obliquity, eccentricity and solar longitude (Ls) of perihelion. Surface temperature is described by the Local Insolation Temperature (LIT) scheme, which uses a daily and latitude-dependent radiation balance. The evaporation rate of water is calculated by an expression for free convection, driven by…
The detection of liquid water by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) at the base of the south polar layered deposits in Ultimi Scopuli has reinvigorated the debate about the origin and stability of liquid water under present-day Martian conditions. To establish the extent of subglacial water in this region, we acquired new data, achieving extended radar coverage over the study area. Here, we present and discuss the results obtained by a new method of analysis of the complete MARSIS dataset, based on signal processing procedures usually applied to terrestrial…
A key outstanding question in Martian science is 'are the polar caps gaining or losing mass and what are the implications for past, current and future climate?' To address this question, we use observations from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) of the north polar cap during late summer for multiple Martian years, to monitor the summertime water cycle in order to place quantitative limits on the amount of water ice deposited and sublimed in late summer. We establish here for the first time the summer cycle of water ice absorption band signatures on the north pola…
A giant impact is commonly thought to explain the dramatic contrast in elevation and crustal thickness between the two hemispheres of Mars known as the "Martian Dichotomy". Initially, this scenario referred to an impact in the northern hemisphere that would lead to a huge impact basin (dubbed the "Borealis Basin"), while more recent work has instead suggested a hybrid origin that produces the Dichotomy through impact-induced crust-production. The majority of these studies have relied upon impact scaling-laws inaccurate at such large-scales, however, and those that have included realistic impac…
Mars' polar layered deposits (PLD) are comprised of layers of varying dust-to-water ice volume mixing ratios (VMR) that may record astronomically-forced climatic variation over Mars' recent orbital history. Retracing the formation of these layers by quantifying the sensitivity of deposition rates of polar material to astronomical forcing is critical for the interpretation of this record. Using a Mars global climate model (GCM), we investigate the sensitivity of annual polar water ice and dust surface deposition to various obliquities and surface water ice distributions at zero eccentricity, pr…
Bright basal reflectors in radargram from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) of the Martian south polar layered deposits (SPLD) have been interpreted to be evidence of subglacial lakes. However, this interpretation is difficult to reconcile with the low Martian geothermal heat flow and the frigid surface temperature at the south pole. We conduct a comprehensive thermophysical evolution modeling of the SPLD and show that subglacial lakes may only form under exceptional circumstances. Subglacial lakes may form if the SPLD contains more than 60 % dust volumetr…
CO2+H2 greenhouse warming has recently emerged as a promising scenario to sufficiently warm the early martian surface to allow the formation of valley networks and lakes. Here we present numerical 3-D global climate simulations of the early martian climate that we have performed assuming dense CO2+H2 atmospheres. Our climate model, derived from earlier works by Forget et al. (2013) and Wordsworth et al. (2013), is coupled to an asynchronous model of the long-term evolution of martian glaciers and lakes. Simulations were carried out at 40° obliquity to investigate how (i) water content and (ii)…
We discuss 3D global simulations of the early Martian climate that we have performed assuming a faint young Sun and denser CO2 atmosphere. We include a self-consistent representation of the water cycle, with atmosphere-surface interactions, atmospheric transport, and the radiative effects of CO2 and H2O gas and clouds taken into account. We find that for atmospheric pressures greater than a fraction of a bar, the adiabatic cooling effect causes temperatures in the southern highland valley network regions to fall significantly below the global average. Long-term climate evolution simulations in…
We analyze Mars Climate Sounder temperature and aerosol data in the tropics to study atmospheric tides and their relation to the dust and water ice distributions. Our results from data covering Mars years (MY) 29-35 reveal that MY29 has large amplitude non-migrating thermal tides during southern hemisphere spring equinox that are not observed at the same local time in any other year. It is the nighttime temperatures that are most perturbed compared to other years, with strong temperature inversions at 35-55 km altitude. Analysis of data at different local times reveals that the temperatures an…
The gullies on Mars were discovered in the year 1999.Since then several hypotheses have appeared trying to explain the presence of these gullies. The main hypotheses are the ones which suggest that some liquid, water or CO2, was responsible for modeling the gullies and ones that propose dry flows as the modeling agents. The aim of this work is to develop an alternative hypotetical mechanism of formation of Martian gullies.Our model proposes that the Martian gullies were formed as a result of a fluidization process of the material deposited on the slopes of the impact craters, plateaux and othe…
Exposed scarps images and ice-penetrating radar measurements in the North Polar Layered Deposits (NPLD) of Mars show alternating layers that provide an archive of past climate oscillations, that are thought to be linked to orbital variations, akin to Milankovitch cycles on Earth. We use the Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD) Martian Global Climate Model (GCM) to study paleoclimate states to enable a better interpretation of the NPLD physical and chemical stratigraphy. When a tropical ice reservoir is present, water vapor transport from the tropics to the poles at low obliquity is modu…
This paper presents a case study of microbe transportation in the Mars-satellites system. We examined the spatial distribution of potential impact-transported microbes on the Martian moons using impact physics by following a companion study (Fujita et al.). We used sterilization data from the precede studies. We considered that the microbes came mainly from the Zunil crater on Mars. We found that 70-80% of the microbes are likely to be dispersed all over the moon surface and are rapidly sterilized due to radiation except for those microbes within a thick ejecta deposit produced by meteoroids. …
Present-day Mars is cold and dry, but mineralogical and morphological evidence shows that liquid-water existed on the surface of ancient Mars. In order to explain this evidence and assess ancient Mars's habitability, one must understand the size and composition of the ancient atmosphere. Here we place constraints on the ancient Martian atmosphere by modeling the coupled, self-consistent evolution of atmospheric CO2, N2, and Ar on Mars from 3.8 billion years ago (Ga) to the present. Our model traces the evolution of these species' abundances and isotopic composition caused by atmospheric escape…
Radar-bright basal reflectors have been detected below the South Polar Layered Deposits (SPLD), Mars using Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) data and have an exciting but controversial interpretation: liquid water from subglacial lakes. We mapped the surface of the SPLD immediately above and surrounding the putative lakes (1:2M map scale) in order to provide geologic context for interpretation of the bright basal reflectors. We use THEMIS daytime IR (100 m/pixel), CTX (6 m/pixel), and HiRISE (25 cm/pixel) data to characterize geologic units and typical surface roug…
Simulations with the Max Planck Institute Martian general circulation model for Martian years 28 and 34 reveal details of the water "pump" mechanism and the role of gravity wave (GW) forcing. Water is advected to the upper atmosphere mainly by upward branches of the meridional circulation: in low latitudes during equinoxes and over the south pole during solstices. Molecular diffusion plays little role in water transport in the middle atmosphere and across the mesopause. GWs modulate the circulation and temperature during global dust storms, thus changing the timing and intensity of the transpo…
We investigate the feasibility and demonstrate the merits of using Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) profiles to retrieve seasonal height variations of CO2 snow/ice cap in Mars' polar areas by applying a co-registration strategy. We present a prototype analysis on the research region of [85.75°S, 86.25°S, 300°E, 330°E] that is located on the residual south polar cap. Our method comprises the recomputation of MOLA footprint coordinates with an updated Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) ephemeris and a revised Mars rotation model. The reprocessed MOLA dataset at the South Pole of Mars (poleward of 78°…
This article presents a monitoring of the atmospheric dust in the south polar region during spring of martian year 27. Our goal is to contribute to identifying the regions where the dust concentration in the atmosphere shows specific temporal patterns, for instance high, variable, and on the rise due to lifting or transport mechanisms. This identification is performed in relation with the seasonal ice regression. Based on a phenomenological examination of the previous results, hypothesis regarding the origin of aerosol activity of the southern polar region are proposed. This is of paramount im…
Seasonal cycle of Martian relative humidity shows that, in the southern and the northern RSL sites, humidity decreases when RSL increment while humidity is high on the fading season. We suggest that the recurrence of RSL is caused by the different angle of response between wet and dry grains. 2D DEM simulation indicates that, when the ratio of a liquid bridge volume to a particle volume is the order of 10^{-7}, the repose angle of Martian sand can increase to ~40 degrees due to cohesion, which is near the slope around RSL starting area. Thus, if this amount of liquid bridge is generated by del…
Araneiforms are radially converging systems of branching troughs exhibiting fractal properties. They are found exclusively in the Southern polar regions of Mars and believed to be result of multiple repetitions of cold CO2 gas jets eruptions. Araneiform troughs get carved by the overpressurized gas rushing underneath a seasonal ice layer towards a newly created opening. Current work is an attempt to quantitatively analyze araneiforms patterns and model their formation mechanism. The dendritic quality of most araneiforms are suggestive that they can be described in terms commonly applied to ter…
Here we discuss one of the current reservoirs of water on Mars, the regolith and rocks exposed at the surface. This reservoir is characterized by the presence of H_{2}O- and OH- bearing phases that produce a broad absorption at a wavelength of \sim 3 μm in near-infrared (NIR) reflectance spectra. This absorption is present in every ice-free spectrum of the Martian surface obtained thus far by orbital NIR spectrometers. We present a quantitative analysis of the global distribution of the 3 μm absorption using the Observatoire pour la Minéralogie, l\'\Eau, les Glaces et l\'\Activité (OMEGA) imag…
The decay of the martian atmosphere - which is dominated by carbon dioxide - is a component of the long-term environmental change on Mars from a climate that once allowed rivers to flow to the cold and dry conditions of today. The minimum size of craters serves as a proxy for palaeopressure of planetary atmospheres, because thinner atmospheres permit smaller objects to reach the surface at high velocities and form craters. The Aeolis Dorsa region near Gale crater on Mars contains a high density of preserved ancient craters interbedded with river deposits and thus can provide constraints on atm…
There is growing evidence suggesting the presence of aqueous environment on ancient Mars, raising the question of the possibility of life in such an environment. Subsequently, with the erosion of the Martian atmosphere resulting in drastic changes in its climate, surface water disappeared, shrinking habitable spaces on the planet, with only a limited amount of water remaining near the surface in form of brines and water-ice deposits. Life, if it ever existed, would have had to adapt to harsh modern conditions, which includes low temperatures and surface pressure, and high radiation dose. Prese…
A time series of the Martian south ice polar cap mean diameter for the period July-December 1924 is investigated. The data are based on the high quality pictures, which are obtained by visual observations of 60 cm telescope in Hamburg Observatory during the great opposition of Mars in AD 1924. After removing of the seasonal trend (caused by the springtime regression of the cap) quasi 36 and 80-82 days cycles in residuals has been obtained. The sunspot activity spectra for the corresponding period is almost the same one. The local maximums of polar cap area residuals has been occured of about 1…
A recent study by Ramirez et al. (2014) demonstrated that an atmosphere with 1.3-4 bar of CO2 and H2O, in addition to 5-20% H2, could have raised the mean annual and global surface temperature of early Mars above the freezing point of water. Such warm temperatures appear necessary to generate the rainfall (or snowfall) amounts required to carve the ancient martian valleys. Here, we use our best estimates for early martian outgassing rates, along with a 1-D photochemical model, to assess the conversion efficiency of CO, CH4, and H2S to CO2, SO2, and H2. Our outgassing estimates assume that Mars…
The springtime sublimation process of Mars' southern seasonal polar CO$_2$ ice cap features dark fan-shaped deposits appearing on the top of the thawing ice sheet. The fan material likely originates from the surface below the ice sheet, brought up via CO$_2$ jets breaking through the seasonal ice cap. Once the dust and dirt is released into the atmosphere, the material may be blown by the surface winds into the dark streaks visible from orbit. The location, size and direction of these fans record a number of parameters important to quantifying seasonal winds and sublimation activity, the most …
We examine the history of the loss and replenishment of the Martian atmosphere using elemental and isotopic compositions of nitrogen and noble gases. The evolution of the atmosphere is calculated by taking into consideration various processes: impact erosion and replenishment by asteroids and comets, atmospheric escape induced by solar radiation and wind, volcanic degassing, and gas deposition by interplanetary dust particles. Our model reproduces the elemental and isotopic compositions of N and noble gases (except for Xe) in the Martian atmosphere, as inferred from exploration missions and an…
Feasibility assessment of optical communications between ground and satellite on Mars through the simulation of atmospheric effects on signal quality leading to a proposal for a new communications network architecture during extreme weather
We present the results of a systematic mapping of seasonally sculpted terrains on the South Polar region of Mars with the Planet Four: Terrains (P4T) online citizen science project. P4T enlists members of the general public to visually identify features in the publicly released Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter CTX images. In particular, P4T volunteers are asked to identify: 1) araneiforms (including features with a central pit and radiating channels known as 'spiders'); 2) erosional depressions, troughs, mesas, ridges, and quasi-circular pits characteristic of the South Polar Residual Cap (SPRC) wh…
Mars shares many similarities and characteristics to Earth including various geological features and planetary structure. The remarkable bimodal distribution of elevations in both planets is one of the most striking global features suggesting similar geodynamic processes of crustal differentiation on Earth and Mars. There also exist several evidences, based on geographic features resembling ancient shorelines, for existence of an ancient martian ocean in the northern hemisphere which covers nearly one third of the planet's surface. However, the interpretation of some features as ancient shorel…
A technologically mature colony on Mars can produce and deliver at least 1 million tons of liquid hydrogen per year to one or more propellant depots at Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Production of 1 $kg$ of hydrogen at Marian colony and its delivery to LEO requires an energy expenditure of 1.4 $GJ$ on Mars. LEO propellant depot contains hydrogen produced on Mars and oxygen produced on the Moon or near-Earth asteroids. This propellant is used to deliver payload from LEO to many destinations in the Solar System including Mars. Delivery of 1 $kg$ payload from LEO to Mars requires an energy expenditure of…
The areal centroids of the youngest polar deposits on Mars are offset from those of adjacent paleopolar deposits by 5-10 degrees. We test the hypothesis that the offset is the result of true polar wander (TPW), the motion of the solid surface with respect to the spin axis, caused by a mass redistribution within or on the surface of Mars. In particular, we consider TPW driven by late-stage volcanism during the late Hesperian to Amazonian. There is observational and qualitative support for this hypothesis: in both North and South, observed offsets lie close to a great circle 90 degrees from Thar…
Dark deposits visible from orbit appear in the Martian south polar region during the springtime. These are thought to form from explosive jets of carbon dioxide gas breaking through the thawing seasonal ice cap, carrying dust and dirt which is then deposited onto the ice as dark 'blotches', or blown by the surface winds into streaks or 'fans'. We investigate machine learning (ML) methods for automatically identifying these seasonal features in High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) satellite imagery. We designed deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) that were trained and teste…
A well-preserved, ancient delta deposit, in combination with ample exposures of Mg-carbonate rich materials, make Jezero Crater in Nili Fossae a compelling astrobiological site and a top candidate for future landed missions to Mars. We use CRISM observations to characterize the surface mineralogy of the crater and surrounding watershed. We have identified a three- endmember sequence of olivine-bearing lithologies that we hypothesize are distinguished by their Mg content. We find that Mg-carbonates are consistently identified in association with one of the olivine-bearing lithologies, although …
Lucus Planum, extending for a radius of approximately 500 km around 181° E, 5° S, is part of the Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF), a set of several discontinuous deposits of fine-grained, friable material straddling across the Martian highland-lowland boundary. The MFF has been variously hypothesized to consist of pyroclastic flows, pyroclastic airfall, paleopolar deposits, or atmospherically-deposited icy dust driven by climate cycles. MARSIS, a low-frequency subsurface-sounding radar carried by ESA's Mars Express, acquired 238 radar swaths across Lucus Planum, providing sufficient coverage for…
The time variations of spectral properties of dark martian surface features are investigated using the OMEGA near-IR dataset. The analyzed period covers two Mars years, spanning from early 2004 to early 2008 (includes the 2007 global dust event). Radiative transfer modeling indicates that the apparent albedo variations of low to mid-latitude dark regions are consistent with those produced by the varying optical depth of atmospheric dust as measured simultaneously from the ground by the Mars Exploration Rovers. We observe only a few significant albedo changes that can be attributed to surface p…
We present spatial and temporal distributions of dust on Mars from Ls = 331 in MY26 until Ls = 80 in MY33 retrieved from the measurements taken by the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) aboard Mars Express. In agreement with previous observations, large dust opacity is observed mostly in the southern hemisphere spring/summer and particularly over regions of higher terrain and large topographic variation. We present a comparison with dust opacities obtained from Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) - Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) measurements. We found good consistency between observations of two…
The nature of the early Martian climate is one of the major unanswered questions of planetary science. Key challenges remain, but a new wave of orbital and in situ observations and improvements in climate modeling have led to significant advances over the last decade. Multiple lines of geologic evidence now point to an episodically warm surface during the late Noachian and early Hesperian periods 3-4 Ga. The low solar flux received by Mars in its first billion years and inefficiency of plausible greenhouse gases such as CO2 means that the steady-state early Martian climate was likely cold. A d…
Experimental Measurements of Benzene Ice Critical Saturation Ratios on Titan Tholins and Impact on the Microphysical Modeling of Titan's South Polar Benzene Cloud
NASA Ames Research Center(美国国家航空航天局艾姆斯研究中心);Bay Area Environmental Research Institute(湾区环境研究所);Centre de Recherche sur les Ions, les Matériaux et la Photonique Université Caen Normandie, ENSICAEN, CNRS, CEA, Normandie Univ, CIMAP UMR6252(诺曼底大学离子、材料与光子研究中心);Southwest Research Institute(西南研究院);LIRA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Cité(巴黎天文台)
Remote sensing data from orbiter missions have proposed that ground ice may currently exist on Mars, although the volume is still uncertain. Recent analyses of Martian meteorites have suggested that the water reservoirs have at least three distinct hydrogen isotope compositions (D/H ratios): primordial and high D/H ratios, which are approximately the same and six times that of ocean water on Earth, respectively, and a newly identified intermediate D/H ratio, which is approximately two to three times higher than that in ocean water on Earth. We calculate the evolution of the D/H ratios and the …
The distribution of subsurface water ice on Mars is a key constraint on past climate, while the volumetric concentration of buried ice (pore-filling versus excess) provides information about the process that led to its deposition. We investigate the subsurface of Arcadia Planitia by measuring the depth of terraces in simple impact craters and mapping a widespread subsurface reflection in radar sounding data. Assuming that the contrast in material strengths responsible for the terracing is the same dielectric interface that causes the radar reflection, we can combine these data to estimate the …
The presence of liquid water at the base of the Martian polar caps has long been suspected but not observed. We surveyed the Planum Australe region using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding, a low-frequency radar on the Mars Express spacecraft. Radar profiles collected between May 2012 and December 2015, contain evidence of liquid water trapped below the ice of the South Polar Layered Deposits. Anomalously bright subsurface reflections were found within a well-defined, 20km wide zone centered at 193°E, 81°S, surrounded by much less reflective areas. Quantitative anal…
We report on mapping of the south polar region of Mars using data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument. Our observations have led to the following discoveries: 1. Water ice is present in the form of pole-circling clouds originating from the circum-Hellas region, beginning prior to Ls=162 and diminishing markedly at Ls=200-204. 2. It has previously been inferred by temperature measurements(Titus et al., 2003) and CO2-H2O mixture spectral models (Langevin et al., 2007) that surface water ice was present in the Cryptic Region in the final stages of subl…
Water-ice-poor, 5-$μ$m-bright material on Saturn's moon Titan has previously been geomorphologically identified as evaporitic. Here we present a global distribution of the occurrences of the 5-$μ$m-bright spectral unit, identified with Cassini's Visual Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and examined with RADAR when possible. We explore the possibility that each of these occurrences are evaporite deposits. The 5-$μ$m-bright material covers 1\% of Titan's surface and is not limited to the poles (the only regions with extensive, long-lived surface liquid). We find the greatest areal concentrati…