The M3 project: 1- A global hyperspectral image-cube of the Martian surface

TL;DR

This paper introduces a global hyperspectral image-cube of Mars derived from OMEGA data, enabling detailed mineralogical and surface chemistry mapping at a planetary scale.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to create a comprehensive 3-D hyperspectral cube of Mars from hundreds of millions of spectra, facilitating new mineral and chemical surface analyses.

Findings

Global mineral distribution maps are generated.

Comparison with previous studies shows improved detail.

The dataset enables instant atmospheric correction and surface analysis.

Abstract

This paper is the first paper of a series that will present the derivation of the modal mineralogy of Mars (M3 project) at a global scale from the near-infrared dataset acquired by the imaging spectrometer OMEGA (Observatoire pour la Min\'eralogie, l'Eau, les Glaces et l'Activit\'e) on board ESA/Mars Express. The objective is to create and provide a global 3-D image-cube of Mars at 32px/{\deg} covering most of Mars surface. This product has several advantages. First, it can be used to instantaneously extract atmospheric- and aerosol-corrected near-infrared (NIR) spectra from any location on Mars. Second, several new data maps can be built as discussed here. That includes new global mineral distributions, quantitative mineral abundance distributions and maps of Martian surface chemistry (wt % oxide) detailed in a companion paper (Riu et al., submitted). Here we present the method to derive the global hyperspectral cube from several hundred millions of spectra. Global maps of some mafic minerals are then shown, and compared to previous works.