Getting Ready for Mars: WISDOM/ExoMars 2020 Data Processing Pipeline and Field Tests

International audienceIn this paper we describe the data processing pipeline we have developed in order to analyze the GPR WISDOM/ExoMars 2020 electromagnetic soundings and the results and lessons learnt from a recent simulation operation field campaign in Chile

Resolution enhancement of WISDOM/ExoMars radar soundings applied on potential Martian analogs

International audienceThe WISDOM ground penetrating radar aboard the Rosalind Franklin rover of the ExoMars 2022 mission will provide radar images of the Martian shallow subsurface down to a few meters and with a vertical resolution of a few centimetres. Such a high resolution imaging of the subsurface will be key in understanding the geological context and guiding the sample acquisition by the rover’s drill. In order to enhance WISDOM resolution and meet the desired 3-cm value (the length of the samples that will be collected), a super-resolution technique known as the “Bandwidth Extrapolation” (BWE) is applied to WISDOM data. The BWE is validated on synthetic and laboratory data before being applied to observations acquired in a variety of potential Martian analog environments

Range resolution enhancement of WISDOM/ExoMars radar soundings by the Bandwidth Extrapolation technique: Validation and application to field campaign measurements

International audienceThe ExoMars 2022 rover mission has been designed to search for traces of life, past or present, on Mars and more specifically below its hostile surface. This will be the first mission able to collect samples down to 2 meters in the Martian subsurface, where organic molecules and bio-signatures may be preserved. The images of the subsurface (or radargrams) provided by the ground penetrating radar WISDOM onboard the ExoMars rover will be key to select the safest and scientifically most relevant locations for drilling. However, the vertical resolution of WISDOM radargrams is limited (to ∼5.5 cm in a typical soil of dielectric constant 4) by the bandwidth of the instrument when applying classical processing techniques. Here we propose to enhance WISDOM radargrams vertical resolution by implementing the Bandwidth Extrapolation (BWE) technique. We demonstrate that this technique yields an improvement of WISDOM vertical resolution by a factor of 3 while well preserving the time of arrival and amplitude of the detected echoes. We validate the BWE technique on synthetic data before applying it to experimental observations acquired both in controlled and natural environments. The resulting super-resolved radargrams greatly improve our understanding of the investigated terrains with a better separation of echoes from underground reflectors, and demonstrate the value of implementing the BWE technique in the WISDOM data processing pipeline which will ultimately provide images of the Martian subsurface down to a few meters depth with a vertical resolution of ∼2 cm in typical soils

Getting ready to sound the Martian sub-surface: WISDOM/ExoMars 2020 data processing and lessons learned from the ExoFit 2019 field-trial

International audienceThe ExoMars2020 mission will land a rover on Mars to search for evidence of past and/or present life in the Martian subsurface. The ExoMars Rover will be equipped with a drill able to sample material at depth. The WISDOM polarimetric ground penetrating radar also accommodated on the rover will sound the shallow sub-surface to help selecting the best locations to collect samples at depth. In this paper, we first describe the data processing chain that has been developed in order to rapidly analyze the data collected by WISDOM and also present the results and lessons learned from the operation simulation trial (ExoFit 2019) that took place in Chile in Feb- March 2019

WISDOM/ExoMars2020: A Calibrated and Fully Characterized Ground Penetrating Radar Ready to Sound the Martian Subsurface

International audienceWe present measurements that have been performed on the WISDOM/ExoMars radar FM to check the instrument performances and obtain reference data that will be used on Mars to produce calibrated data and allow quantitative analysis

The WISDOM radar on board the ExoMars 2022 Rover: Characterization and calibration of the flight model

International audienceThe ground penetrating radar WISDOM on board the Rover of the ExoMars 2022 mission (ESA/Roscosmos) will be a pioneer in the exploration of the Martian subsurface from the surface (until now, Martian sounding radars have been operated from orbit). WISDOM will image the first meters below the surface of Oxia Planum — the ExoMars 2022 landing site — with the objectives of revealing its geological history and identifying safe and promising scientific targets for subsurface sampling by the Rover drill. In this paper, we present the qualification, characterization and calibration tests that have been conducted on WISDOM flight model in order to assess its performance, build the data processing pipeline and prepare scientific return of this experiment. In most favorable but geologically plausible cases (low loss and homogeneous subsurface, smooth interface), WISDOM can detect a buried interface down to a depth of 8 m with a vertical resolution of 3 cm (for a subsurface dielectric constant of 4). Its penetration depth is typically 2 m in less favorable environments. For safety reason, WISDOM antennas are accommodated 38 cm above the ground; the amplitude of the surface echo will be used to estimate the top layer dielectric constant with an accuracy of 13% which translates into an accuracy of 6% on the distance/depth assessment. WISDOM data processing chain includes corrections aiming at removing parasitic signals of various origins (electronic coupling, antenna crosstalk, multiple surface echoes, etc.) and at correcting the data to a reference temperature and antenna elevation; it has been designed to automatically produce calibrated radargrams in less than 20 min as required for the mission operations. Additional more sophisticated processing will be manually run in parallel. The impact of the Rover structure on measurements has been investigated and can be partially removed

ExoFiT: ExoMars-Like Field Trials – a Mission Simulation.

International audienceHere, we focus on the ExoMars-Like Field Trial (ExoFiT), a series of realistic mission simulations based on the ESA ExoMars rover mission slated to be launched in 2020. The mission will carry a suite of instruments to carry out its mission objectives focused on geological and exobiological researc