Rickbir Singh Bahia

• PhD
• Research Fellow at European Space Agency

Identifying surface sites with significant astrobiological potential on Mars requires a comprehensive understanding of past geological processes and conditions there, including the shallow subsurface region. Numerical modelling could distinguish between regions dominated by erosion and those characterized by sediment accumulation in ancient wet env...

This review paper summarizes the observations and results of the Mars Express Mission and its application in the analysis of geological processes and landforms on Mars during the last 20 years. The Mars Express observations provided an extended data base allowing a comparative evaluation of different geological surface landforms and their time-base...

This 1:30,000 scale geological map describes Oxia Planum, Mars, the landing site for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission. The map represents our current understanding of bedrock units and their relationships prior to Rosalind Franklin’s exploration of this location. The map details 15 bedrock units organised into 6 groups and 7 textural and...

The South Pole–Aitken (SPA) basin is the oldest and largest visible impact structure on the Moon, making it a high priority science site for exploration missions. The 492 km diameter Apollo peak-ring basin is one of the youngest and largest basins within the SPA basin. We selected three regions of interest (ROIs) in the Apollo basin for which the l...

Valley networks incising the flanks of Martian volcanoes are potential evidence of geologically recent fluvial activity, either via geothermal heating of snowmelt and groundwater upwelling [Gulick and Baker, 1989, 1990; Gulick et al., 1997; Gulick, 2001; Hynek et al., 2010], or summit snowpack melt [Fassett and Head, 2006, 2007]; however, their ori...

Fluvial valleys incised into planetary surfaces display morphologies, geometries and orientations that can be used to understand their controlling processes. Comparisons between valley orientations and topographic surface slope direction have been used to understand how Martian surfaces have evolved (Luo and Stepinski, 2012; Black et al., 2017); ho...

Martian valley networks are evidence for surface run-off and past water cycles on ancient Mars. The origin of some valleys is still uncertain. We determine whether valleys dissecting the Argyre Basin region are subglacial or fluvial in origin.

The surface of Mars displays many landform assemblages associated with liquid flows. Martian outflow channels are one such feature. These long sinuous incisions containing streamlined islands can be thousands of kilometers long and hundreds of kilometers wide, with depths reaching 2.5 km. These forms were certainly carved by enormous flows of liqui...

Valley networks are ancient drainage systems incised on the southern hemisphere of Mars, and stand as evidence that liquid water once sculpted its surface. The duration of valley network activity and the sources of water are key questions in deciphering the timing of water stability on early Mars, but remain poorly constrained. In this study we add...

The Martian surface is incised by numerous valley networks, which indicate the planet experienced sustained widespread flowing water in the past (e.g. Carr in Water on Mars, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996; Phil Trans R Soc A 370:2193–2212, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0500). Examining the distribution and geometries of these val...

Seven lunar crater sites of granular avalanches are studied utilizing high-resolution images (0.42-1.3 m/pixel) from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera; one, in Kepler crater, is examined in detail. All the sites are slopes of debris extensively aggraded by frictional freezing at their dynamic angle of repose, four in craters formed in basalti...