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Abstract:
China’s first autonomous Mars rover, Zhurong, has carried out an exploration mission on the Utopian Plain. As Martian rocks and their three-dimensional (3D) morphology are essential for exploring the geological evolution of Mars, we identified 6,185 centimeter-scale rocks from the Zhurong NaTeCams images using an automatic approach, and 3D morphological features are then calculated for each rock. The statistical result shows that small rocks in centimeters make up the majority. Morphological analyses of rocks in different areas show that landscape type affects the number of rocks but has no clear relation to the size-frequency distribution of rocks. The outcrop rocks, the predominate type of rocks in the Zhurong landing area, and the float rocks around a crater are distributed differently in proportions regarding all morphological features, suggesting different formation and fragmentation processes of these two types of rocks. Further comparative analysis with the rocks at the Spirit traverse is also conducted. Some commonalities between the Zhurong outcrop rocks and the Spirit volcanic rocks are found in 2D shape compactness and 3D sphericity. Meanwhile, the float rocks are distributed significantly differently, indicating their source is not the same with the outcrop rocks, but is highly likely an impact event. In general, this study provides new insight into the Martian surface characteristics based on the centimeter-scale 3D rocks in the Zhurong landing area.
