A short history of astropedology

Abstract

Astropedology is the study of soils on other planetary bodies and stretches the definition of soil to materials on the surface of a planetary body altered in place by physical, chemical, or biological processes. This new disciplinary name was coined by Roy E. Cameron in 1966 from studies of desert soils and their microbes in Arizona and Antarctica as analogs for Martian soils to be investigated by NASA Viking missions. Astropedology now has documented numerous actual soil profiles exposed in cliff faces, natural cracks, or cores studied by robotic missions to the Moon, Venus, and Mars, with increasingly advanced and precise chemical and other analyses. Specimens are also available for study from Lunar and Martian meteorites, and from sample return from the Moon, also planned from Mars. Life has yet to be found beyond Earth, but Mars has surprisingly Earth-like soils, which can be identified as Gypsids in US taxonomy. Soil formation by micrometeoroid bombardment on the Moon and by melting and glazing on Venus are truly out of this world.