Surveying the ice condensation period at southern polar Mars using a CNN ...

• Main Authors: Gergácz, Mira, Kereszturi, Ákos
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2023
• Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics astro-ph.EP; Machine Learning cs.LG; Image and Video Processing eess.IV; FOS Physical sciences; FOS Computer and information sciences; FOS Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; Ice cap
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2312.15260; https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.15260

Before the seasonal polar ice cap starts to expand towards lower latitudes on Mars, small frost patches may condensate out during the cold night and they may remain on the surface even during the day in shady areas. If ice in these areas can persist before the arrival of the contiguous ice cap, they may remain after the recession of it too, until the irradiation increases and the ice is met with direct sunlight. In case these small patches form periodically at the same location, slow chemical changes might occur as well. To see the spatial and temporal occurrence of such ice patches, large number of optical images should be searched for and checked. The aim of this study is to survey the ice condensation period on the surface with an automatized method using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) applied to High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The CNN trained to recognise small ice patches is automatizing the search, making it feasible to ...