Rivers and Lakes in Western Arabia Terra: The Fluvial Catchment of the ExoMars 2022 Rover Landing Site

Oxia Planum, the landing site for ExoMars rover mission, is a shallow basin on southern margin of Chryse Planitia that hosts remnants fan-shaped sedimentary deposits associated with ancient channel system Coogoon Vallis. This indicates runoff from catchment in Arabia Terra has transported sediment into site. To explore this fluvial we created model Planum and, using 6 m/pixel ConTeXt camera orbital remote sensing image data, digitized and lacustrine landforms Western around catchment. We find: (a) The minimum area ∼2.1 × 105 km2 been episodically deformed by tectonic activity; (b) There were at least two phases activity. first mature landscape Vallis, which may have deposited alluvial or deltaic Basin. After substantial hiatus, second phase activity incised U-section channels pre-existing systems; (c) Evidence numerous possible paleolake within These are not well connected to probably sustained groundwater contemporaneous both might modified mineralogy Planum. experienced an distal deltaic/lacustrine depositional environment during mid Noachian, was later overprinted younger