Eric Pilles

• Western University

The Offset Dykes of the ~1.85 Ga ~200 km-diameter Sudbury impact structure formed by the injection of impact melt from embayment structures in the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC) – the ~3–5 km thick impact melt sheet – into the footwall of the crater. Despite having been recognized over a century ago and being the sites for several world-class ore de...

Negril crater is a 52 km complex crater located north of Syrtis Major, Mars. The central uplift of Negril crater is remarkably well-exposed and contains one of the best examples of dykes associated with a Martian crater. This study aims to characterize the dykes within the central uplift and determine if they are impactite dykes that formed as a pa...

Lunar impact melt deposits have unusual surface properties, unlike any measured terrestrial lava flow. Radar observations suggest that they are incredibly rough at decimeter scales, but they appear smooth in high-resolution, meter-scale optical images. The cause of their unusual surface roughness is unknown. In this work, we investigate the propert...

The CanMars Mars sample return (MSR) analogue mission was conducted as a field and operational test for the Mars 2020 sample cache rover mission and was the most realistic known MSR rover analogue mission to-date. A rover — similar in scale to that of rover planned for NASA's Mars 2020 mission — was deployed to a scientifically relevant Mars-analog...

The 2016 CanMars analogue mission simulated a Mars rover operation modeled very closely on NASA's Mars 2020 mission, with a comparable rover, instrument suite, and operations system. Over 28 sols of subjective mission time, the mission explored a terrestrial Mars analogue site with a remote science operations team, subject to realistic operational...

In 2009, the Canadian Space Agency funded a project to create a field-deployable high-resolution microscope with 3D and multispectral capabilities. The instrument, called the Three-dimensional Exploration Multispectral Microscopic Imager, or TEMMI, was designed to be mounted on the manipulator-arm of a robotic rover for use in analogue planetary ex...

Approaches to rover mission operations were investigated in the framework of the CanMars Mars Sample Return (MSR) analogue mission deployments. Improving the efficiency of operations is a necessity for future planetary missions, including Mars 2020, which seek to combine sample targeting with in situ investigations in the fixed amount of time avail...

The return of samples from known locations on Mars is among the highest priority goals of the international planetary science community. A possible scenario for Mars Sample Return (MSR) is a series of 3 missions: sample cache, fetch, and retrieval. The NASA Mars 2020 mission represents the first cache mission and was the focus of the CanMars analog...

Igneous rocks are the primary building blocks of planetary crusts. Most igneous rocks originate via decompression melting and/or wet melting of protolith lithologies within planetary interiors and their classification and compositional, petrographic, and textural characteristics, are well-studied. As our exploration of the Solar System continues, s...

The Offset Dykes are impact melt-bearing dykes related to the 1.85 Ga Sudbury impact structure. Currently, the dykes extend radially outward from—or occur concentrically around—the Sudbury Igneous Complex, which is the remnant of a differentiated impact melt sheet and the source of the dykes. The recently identified three Pele Offset Dykes intrude...

Field observations provide insight into the formation of impact-related dykes at the Sudbury impact structure.

The Offset Dykes at Sudbury are host to some of the largest Ni-Cu-PGE deposits in the world. This research focuses on understanding better their origin, the timing of emplacement, and how the different phases relate to one another.