Developing an Environmental Chamber to Simulate Conditions at the South Pole of Mars

The North and South Polar Seasonal caps, as well as the South Polar Residual Cap on Mars are composed of carbon dioxide (CO2) ice. They have been extensively studied using data from orbital missions and Earth-based observations, however laboratory studies are necessary to better understand the properties of the ice. We have created an experimental setup to study the texture and photometric properties of CO2 ice under environmental conditions representative of polar areas on Mars. This thesis gives an overview of the environmental chamber and spectroscopy systems and presents some results obtained during experiments conducted to date. We observed two temperature dependent textures of CO2 ice: polycrystalline slab ice and prismatic frost. Sintering of fine-grained frost into a pre-existing slab, as well as fracturing of polycrystalline ice layer due to basal sublimation was observed in several experiments. We recorded near infrared reflectance spectra of slab ice throughout its deposition from nadir with zero phase angle.