On the status of orbital high-resolution repeat imaging of Mars for the observation of dynamic surface processes

This work deals with the meta-data analysis of high-resolution orbital imagery that was acquired over the last four decades of Mars. The objective of this analysis is to provide a starting point for planetary scientists who are interested in examining the martian surface in order to detect changes that are related to not fully understood natural phenomena. An image aggregation method is introduced and used to generate image groupings related to prioritising regions for change detection. The parameters determining each grouping are the season, the Martian Year and the local time that an image was acquired, the imaging instrument and its resolution. The analysis shows that there is sufficient coverage to systematically examine periodic martian phenomena in images that depict the same area over the same season, as well as sporadic martian phenomena (e.g. a new crater) in images that depict the same area in different time periods. The end product of this work is a series of 35 global coverage maps demonstrating the high-resolution repeat coverage of Mars up to Martian Year 31 under different temporal and viewing condition constraints. These are available both through supplementary material as well as via a web-GIS.1