LONDON: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft continues to investigate the dwarf planet Ceres, particularly those bright spots it found on the earlier approach. Overall, though, the images it continues to send back have been remarkable.
“The craters we find on Ceres, in terms of their depth and diameter, are very similar to what we see on Dione and Tethys, two icy satellites of Saturn that are about the same size and density as Ceres. The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust,” explains Paul Schenk, who is a geologist from the Lunar and Planetary Institute that is working with the Dawn science team.
Furthermore, Dawn science team member Ralf Jaumann, from the German Aerospace Center, in Berlin, says, “The impact craters Dantu and Ezinu are extremely deep, while the much larger impact basins Kerwan and Yalode exhibit much shallower depth, indicating increasing ice mobility with crater size and age.”
