Unveiling the surface characteristics of Mars across the “Stealth” Region with Mars-Express Bistatic Radar Experiment

The Equatorial Medusae Fossae Formation (MFF) region of Mars is one of  the least studied surfaces of the Red-Planet. Earth-based radar  experiments have found it as a “radar-dark” region and hence was named as the “stealth” region. It is believed to be a massive aeolian  deposit with a depth of at least several meters and is associated with  the volcanoes in the adjacent Tharsis region of Mars. Radar-sounding experiments in the MHz frequency range claimed to have measured an average bulk dielectric constant of ∼3.0 up to about a few kilometers. However, till date, any detailed study of the layered structure of this region is not present. In this work, we studied the MFF region using S-band and X-band radio-waves from Mars Express Bistatic Radar experiment and detecting the subsurface echoes at NASA’s Deep-Space-Network to reveal the variation of the surface properties.