A crater doublet formed by the simultaneous impact of the two fragments of a split projectile, or of two mutually orbiting impactors, is seen in this DAWN FC frame. The area outside the larger crater in which the crater doublet formed features a high density of smaller craters, locally in clusters or chains. The area shown in this image is located on the floor of Vesta’s large south-polar impact structure Rhea Silvia.
The image was taken from a spacecraft altitude of approximately 270 km in Vesta’s Low Altitude orbit phase (LAMO) on Dec. 20, 2011. Image resolution is ~ 25 m/pxl. The image center is located at lat. ~ 75° S, long. 108° E.
The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington D.C. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn framing cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The Framing Camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.
More information about Dawn is online at http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA