Mercury: full‐disk radar images and the detection and stability of ice at the North Pole

Abstract

The first full‐disk radar images of Mercury were obtained on August 8 and 23, 1991. These images were constructed using the Very Large Array (VLA) in Socorro, New Mexico, to receive and map radar flux at 3.5 cm (X band) which was continuously transmitted from the 70‐m Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California. Approximately 77% of the surface was imaged, at resolutions as good as 150 km. About half of the hemisphere photographed by Mariner 10 was imaged, as well as most of the hemisphere which has not previously been photographed. At the time of the observations, the north pole was visible, and the feature with the highest same sense (SS) circular reflectivity in the images is near the nominal polar position. The peak SS reflectivity of this feature was 7.9%, and the circular polarization ratio throughout much of the feature is >1. Our best estimate of the size of the feature is that its diameter is ≲350 km. We interpret the feature to be indicative of the presence of ices because of the signal strength and polarization characteristics. The ices must be very clean and were thus probably deposited in a relatively short time period. The most likely place to find these ices is in any permanently shadowed areas in the polar regions, which would be very cold. In comparison to absolute reflectivities of other icy bodies and regions in the solar system, the reflectivity of the north polar feature is slightly depressed. This is probably because the ices do not fill an observational resolution cell (i.e., there is incomplete areal coverage), or are covered by a layer of dust or soil, which absorbs some of the incoming and outgoing radar energy, or both. A covering layer would also protect any ices from erosion by energetic sources. Other prominent features on the unphotographed hemisphere correspond to positions where atmospheric sodium enhancements have been measured from Earth. This may indicate that these locations are large basins similar to the Caloris basin, where an atmospheric potassium enhancement has been measured, which may be the result of increased degassing in the disrupted surface and near surface. Direct comparison of the radar echoes from our features with those from the Caloris basin are hard to make, as Caloris was not imaged by us in a favorable geometry. Features on the photographed hemisphere are smaller and mostly associated with craters and crater complexes, most notably the Kuiper crater and its environs.