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Dawn - Mis­sion to Ves­ta and Ceres

Dawn – one mission, two heavenly bodies

Dawn – one mis­sion, two heav­en­ly bod­ies

March 2, 2015  NASA’s Dawn space­craft was launched on 27 Septem­ber 2007. On 16 Ju­ly 2011, it ar­rived at the as­ter­oid Ves­ta, which it ex­plored un­til 5 Septem­ber 2012. The space­craft then de­part­ed for the dwarf plan­et Ceres, where it will ar­rive on 6 March 2015. The Dawn mis­sion is the first to suc­ces­sive­ly study two ce­les­tial bod­ies from or­bit.

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Image 1/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
An encounter with Ceres

An en­counter with Ceres

January 27, 2015  The NASA Dawn space­craft will ar­rive at the dwarf plan­et Ceres on 6 March 2015. Once there, it will record the sur­face with the Ger­man-de­vel­oped Fram­ing Cam­era. This im­age was ac­quired from a dis­tance of 237,000 kilo­me­tres from the dwarf plan­et.

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Image 2/42, Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).
Two Faces of Ceres

Two Faces of Ceres

February 18, 2015  These two views of Ceres were ac­quired by NASA's Dawn space­craft on Feb. 12, 2015, from a dis­tance of about 52,000 miles (83,000 kilo­me­ters) as the dwarf plan­et ro­tat­ed. The im­ages, which were tak­en about 10 hours apart, have been mag­ni­fied from their orig­i­nal size. The Dawn space­craft is due to ar­rive at Ceres on March 6, 2015.

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Image 3/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
Ceres half in shadow

Ceres half in shad­ow

March 2, 2015  These im­ages of dwarf plan­et Ceres were ac­quired on 25 Febru­ary 2015, at a dis­tance of 40,000 kilo­me­tres, by the Ger­man-built Fram­ing Cam­era on board NASA's Dawn space­craft. The im­age res­o­lu­tion is 3.7 kilo­me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 4/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
View of Ceres

View of Ceres

March 6, 2015  This im­age of the dwarf plan­et Ceres was ac­quired on 1 March 2015, by the Ger­man-built Fram­ing Cam­era on board NASA’s Dawn space­craft, from a dis­tance of 49,000 kilo­me­tres. The im­age res­o­lu­tion is 4.6 kilo­me­tres per pix­el. This is the last im­age ac­quired be­fore Dawn en­tered or­bit around Ceres. Dur­ing this ma­noeu­vre, no fur­ther imag­ing was pos­si­ble be­cause Dawn could not point its in­stru­ments to­wards the sur­face of the dwarf plan­et.

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Image 5/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
A new side of Ceres

A new side of Ceres

February 10, 2015  This im­age shows a side of dwarf plan­et Ceres not pre­vi­ous­ly im­aged by NASA’s Dawn space­craft. Cere’s sur­face is cov­ered with sev­er­al bright spots and im­pres­sive craters - some of which fea­ture a cen­tral moun­tain. The pic­ture was tak­en by the cam­era sys­tem on board Dawn on 4 Febru­ary 2015 from a dis­tance of 145 000 kilo­me­ters.

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Image 6/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Bright patches on Ceres

Bright patch­es on Ceres

February 27, 2015  There are sev­er­al un­usu­al­ly bright patch­es on the sur­face of Ceres. The bright­est of these is in the mid­dle of a large im­pact crater and is clear­ly vis­i­ble in this im­age. It is al­so ob­vi­ous that there is an­oth­er, slight­ly less bright re­gion, ap­par­ent­ly in the same im­pact basin. The Ger­man-built Fram­ing Cam­era on board NASA’s Dawn space­craft ac­quired this im­age on 19 Febru­ary 2015, from near­ly 46,000 kilo­me­tres away.

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Image 7/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
White spots on Ceres

White spots on Ceres

April 20, 2015  The white spots in a crater on Ceres can be seen at the top of this im­age, which was ac­quired by the Dawn or­biter on 15 April 2015.

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Image 8/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Chain of mountains in Urvara crater

Chain of moun­tains in Ur­vara crater

August 25, 2015  This im­age was ac­quired by the Fram­ing Cam­era on board the Dawn space­craft on 19 Au­gust 2015. From an al­ti­tude of 1470 kilo­me­tres, the in­te­ri­or of Ur­vara Crater is vis­i­ble. A moun­tain range can be seen in the low­er left cor­ner of the im­age, and the crater rim can be ob­served to the right of the im­age.

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Image 9/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Rocks and craters on Ceres

Rocks and craters on Ceres

August 25, 2015  This im­age of the dwarf plan­et Ceres was ac­quired on 19 Au­gust 2015 by the Dawn space­craft from a dis­tance of 1470 kilo­me­tres. It shows a six-kilo­me­tre high, pyra­mid-shaped moun­tain in the south­ern hemi­sphere be­tween the craters Kir­nis, Ron­go and Yalode. Note the bright stripes on its steep slopes. The im­age res­o­lu­tion is 140 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 10/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Gaue crater on Ceres

Gaue crater on Ceres

August 25, 2015  This im­age of Gaue crater on the dwarf plan­et Ceres was ac­quired on 18 Au­gust 2015. The 84-kilo­me­tre di­am­e­ter crater par­tial­ly over­laps an old­er crater. The im­age was ac­quired by the Dawn Fram­ing Cam­era from a dis­tance of 1470 kilo­me­tres from the sur­face .

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Image 11/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
Ceres – a surface covered in craters

Ceres – a sur­face cov­ered in craters

March 2, 2015  This mo­sa­ic shows the sur­face of the dwarf plan­et Ceres and is com­posed of im­ages ac­quired by the Ger­man-built Fram­ing Cam­era on board NASA's Dawn mis­sion on 19 Febru­ary 2015. The dis­tance be­tween the cam­era and Ceres was 46,000 kilo­me­tres and the im­age res­o­lu­tion is four kilo­me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 12/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
Huge troughs on Vesta – a result of mega impacts at the south pole

Huge troughs on Ves­ta – a re­sult of mega im­pacts at the south pole

May 9, 2012  As NASA’s Dawn space­craft sent the first im­ages of Ves­ta back to Earth in Ju­ly 2011, sci­en­tists im­me­di­ate­ly no­ticed nu­mer­ous troughs, as if carved with a gi­gan­tic plough. This im­age shows two troughs in the Di­valia Fos­sa sys­tem, run­ning par­al­lel to the low­er edge of the im­age. The ma­jor­i­ty of these troughs ex­tend along the equa­tor, but a sec­ond group – in­clined with re­spect to the equa­tor – have been iden­ti­fied in the north­ern hemi­sphere. These par­al­lel trench­es are usu­al­ly sev­er­al hun­dred kilo­me­tres long, up to 15 kilo­me­tres wide and more than one kilo­me­tre in depth. They are the re­sult of two large as­ter­oid im­pacts at the South Pole, demon­strat­ing that im­pact events that oc­curred hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres apart caused shocks through­out Ves­ta and al­tered its sur­face.

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Image 13/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
The topography of Vesta’s south pole

The to­pog­ra­phy of Ves­ta’s south pole

September 14, 2011  From stereo im­ages ob­tained with Dawn’s fram­ing cam­era, sci­en­tists were able to pro­duce a glob­al shape mod­el of as­ter­oid Ves­ta. With di­am­e­ters be­tween 458 and 578 kilo­me­tres, Ves­ta is not a spher­i­cal body, so its sur­face to­pog­ra­phy is ref­er­enced to the the­o­ret­i­cal sur­face of a three-ax­i­al el­lip­soidal body with se­mi-ma­jor ax­es of 289 kilo­me­tres, 280 kilo­me­tres, and 229 kilo­me­tres, re­spec­tive­ly. On Earth, we ref­er­ence all to­pog­ra­phy to the spher­i­cal ‘sur­face’ of our glob­al ocean lev­el. The im­age shows the el­e­va­tion of sur­face struc­tures above or be­low this el­lip­soidal body with a hor­i­zon­tal res­o­lu­tion of about 750 me­tres per pix­el. The ter­rain mod­el of Ves­ta’s south­ern hemi­sphere shows a re­mark­able cir­cu­lar struc­ture with a di­am­e­ter of about 500 kilo­me­tres, its rim ris­ing above the in­te­ri­or of the struc­ture for more than 15 kilo­me­tres. From low-res­o­lu­tion im­ages of the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope it was known that a big de­pres­sion ex­ist­ed at Ves­ta’s south pole, and was sus­pect­ed to be a big im­pact basin. Dawn sci­en­tists are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the pro­cess­es that formed this struc­ture.

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Image 14/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
Perspective view of a part of the edge of the south pole basin on Vesta

Per­spec­tive view of a part of the edge of the south pole basin on Ves­ta

September 14, 2011  A vis­i­tor from Earth would en­counter a dra­mat­ic land­scape at Ves­ta's south pole: cliffs sev­er­al kilo­me­tres high, deep trench­es and craters which have formed the south­ern tip of this fas­ci­nat­ing pro­to­plan­et in the as­ter­oid belt, and a moun­tain mas­sif up to 15 kilo­me­tres high. For the sci­en­tists work­ing on the Dawn mis­sion, it is not yet clear how this wild land­scape was formed – col­li­sions with oth­er as­ter­oids con­tribut­ed, but al­so the in­ter­nal pro­cess­es that played a role dur­ing the as­ter­oid’s ear­ly for­ma­tion phas­es. This di­ag­o­nal view was de­rived from a glob­al dig­i­tal el­e­va­tion mod­el of the as­ter­oid cre­at­ed from stereo im­age da­ta ob­tained with the Ger­man Fram­ing Cam­era on board NASA's Dawn space probe at an al­ti­tude of 2420 kilo­me­tres above Ves­ta's sur­face. The im­ages, which were ac­quired dur­ing Dawn's ob­ser­va­tion or­bit, have a res­o­lu­tion of about 250 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 15/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Craters and grooves

Craters and grooves

August 29, 2011  NASA's Dawn space­craft ac­quired this im­age of the sur­face of Ves­ta with its Fram­ing Cam­era, us­ing the clear fil­ter, on 11 Au­gust 2011. The im­age has a res­o­lu­tion of about 260 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 16/42, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
Dark hills

Dark hills

August 29, 2011  NASA's Dawn space­craft ac­quired this im­age of the sur­face of Ves­ta with the Fram­ing Cam­era, us­ing the clear fil­ter, on 12 Au­gust 2011. The im­age has a res­o­lu­tion of about 260 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 17/42, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
Mosaic of Vesta's equatorial region

Mo­sa­ic of Ves­ta's equa­to­ri­al re­gion

August 1, 2011  The im­age shows a mo­sa­ic of Ves­ta’s equa­to­ri­al re­gion (30°N to 30°S). The mo­sa­ic is com­posed of ob­ser­va­tions tak­en through the panchro­mat­ic fil­ter and ob­tained on 24 Ju­ly 2011 as part of a ro­ta­tion char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion se­quence (RC3); it has a scale of about 400 me­tres per pix­el and shows im­pact craters of dif­fer­ent sizes, grooves par­al­lel to the equa­tor and dark fea­tures with­in some of the craters. The mo­sa­ic is in equidis­tant map pro­jec­tion, based on a dig­i­tal ter­rain mod­el from RC3a/OP­NAV18/RC2 and Lam­ber­tian pho­to­met­ri­cal­ly cor­rect­ed.

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Image 18/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Vesta's equatorial region in false colours

Ves­ta's equa­to­ri­al re­gion in false colours

August 29, 2011  NASA's Dawn space­craft ac­quired this false-colour im­age with its Fram­ing Cam­era on 25 Ju­ly 2011. The red–green tones show an in­crease in lu­mi­nos­i­ty in the vis­i­ble con­tin­u­um, while the green tones show its rel­a­tive de­crease in the near in­frared caused by iron-con­tain­ing min­er­als.

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Image 19/42, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
Up and down on Vesta's crater-strewn surface

Up and down on Ves­ta's crater-strewn sur­face

August 29, 2011  NASA's Dawn space­craft ob­tained this im­age with the Fram­ing Cam­era on 11 Au­gust 2011 us­ing the clear fil­ter. The im­age has a res­o­lu­tion of about 260 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 20/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Anaglyphs of the 'Snowman Crater'

Anaglyphs of the 'Snow­man Crater'

August 29, 2011  This anaglyph im­age shows the to­pog­ra­phy of a set of three craters on Ves­ta that, due to their un­usu­al ar­range­ment, have in­for­mal­ly been nick­named 'Snow­man' by the cam­era's team mem­bers. The im­age da­ta was ac­quired us­ing the Fram­ing Cam­era on board NASA's Dawn space­craft on 6 Au­gust 2011. The im­age has a res­o­lu­tion of about 260 me­tres per pix­el. If you would like to view this im­age in 3D, you must use red-green (or red-blue) glass­es (left: red; right: green [blue]).

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Image 21/42, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
Scarp in the south polar region

Scarp in the south po­lar re­gion

August 29, 2011  NASA's Dawn space­craft ac­quired this im­age with its Fram­ing Cam­era, us­ing the clear fil­ter, on 12 Au­gust 2011. The im­age has a res­o­lu­tion of about 260 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 22/42, Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA
Global photo mosaic of Vesta

Glob­al pho­to mo­sa­ic of Ves­ta

November 22, 2011  The first glob­al map of the as­ter­oid Ves­ta gen­er­at­ed from im­ages ac­quired with the Fram­ing Cam­era. In Ju­ly and Au­gust 2011, Dawn or­bit­ed the third largest ob­ject in the as­ter­oid belt ini­tial­ly in a 'map­ping or­bit' at an al­ti­tude of about 2400 kilo­me­tres above its sur­face. In do­ing so, the cam­era ac­quired hun­dreds of im­ages with a spa­tial res­o­lu­tion of about 250 me­tres per pix­el. What is re­ferred to as ‘sim­ple cylin­dri­cal pro­jec­tion’ was se­lect­ed for the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this glob­al map. In this map pro­jec­tion the south pole is not a point but is ex­tend­ed as a line the length of the equa­tor. Thus, the south pole cov­ers the en­tire low­er edge of the im­age and all char­ac­ter­is­tics of this re­gion are rep­re­sent­ed in dis­tor­tion. The spa­tial res­o­lu­tion of the pho­to is 750 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 23/42, Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)
Pseudo-true colour image of the three 'Snowman' craters

Pseu­do-true colour im­age of the three 'Snow­man' craters

May 9, 2012  Three im­pact craters of dif­fer­ent sizes, ar­ranged in the shape of a snow­man, make up one of the most strik­ing fea­tures on Ves­ta. In this view the three 'snow­balls' are up­side down, so that the shad­ows make the fea­tures eas­i­ly recog­nis­able. North is to the low­er right in the im­age, which has a res­o­lu­tion of 70 me­tres per pix­el. The im­age is com­posed of many in­di­vid­u­al pho­tographs tak­en dur­ing the high-al­ti­tude map­ping or­bit, at about 680 kilo­me­tres above Ves­ta's sur­face. The largest of the three craters, Mar­cia, has a di­am­e­ter of 60 kilo­me­tres. The cen­tral crater, which is about 50 kilo­me­tres in di­am­e­ter, is named Calpur­nia, and the low­er crater, named Min­u­cia, has a di­am­e­ter of about 22 kilo­me­tres. Mar­cia and Calpur­nia are pos­si­bly the re­sult of an im­pact by dou­blet as­ter­oids, where­as Min­u­cia was formed by a lat­er im­pact. To de­rive the colour in­for­ma­tion, im­ages ac­quired by the Ger­man cam­era sys­tem on the Dawn space­craft in two near-in­frared chan­nels (917 nanome­tres and 749 nanome­tres) and an ul­tra­vi­o­let chan­nel (438 nanome­tres) were com­bined to cre­ate what is re­ferred to as a pseu­do-true colour im­age. The true colours of the sur­face of Ves­ta ap­pear some­what dif­fer­ent, but the sub­tle changes in ma­te­ri­al prop­er­ties across the craters and im­pact ejec­ta can be de­tect­ed. In both Mar­cia and Calpur­nia, land­slides can be seen; al­so, dark ma­te­ri­al has been ex­posed be­low the rim of Mar­cia.

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Image 24/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
The topographical map reveals a double impact at Vesta’s south pole

The to­po­graph­i­cal map re­veals a dou­ble im­pact at Ves­ta’s south pole

May 9, 2012  Ob­ser­va­tions with the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope hint­ed that the south pole of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 500-kilo­me­tre as­ter­oid Ves­ta was some­what flat­tened. With the im­ages ac­quired by the Dawn space­craft, it be­came ob­vi­ous that there is a huge im­pact basin, with a di­am­e­ter of 500 kilo­me­tres. It has been named Rheasil­via, af­ter one of the Vestal Vir­gins of an­cient Rome. DLR has com­put­ed to­po­graph­i­cal maps of as­ter­oid’s sur­face from stereo­scop­ic im­age da­ta; these re­veal the ex­tent of this cos­mic col­li­sion (red and white – el­e­vat­ed ar­eas; green and blue – low re­gions). The im­pact left a 500-kilo­me­tre wide and, in some places, more than 10-kilo­me­tre deep basin sur­round­ed by a ring of el­e­vat­ed rock. In the cen­tre of Rheasil­via is a more than 20-kilo­me­tre high cen­tral peak. What sur­prised the re­searchers was the dis­cov­ery of a sec­ond, old­er basin with a di­am­e­ter of 400 kilo­me­tres, which was named Veneneia. In the right-hand im­age, dashed lines in­di­cate the out­lines of Rheasil­via and Veneneia. The cen­tres of the basins are each marked with an ‘X’.

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Image 25/42, Credit: Science/AAAS
The Rheasilvia impact basin on Vesta's south pole

The Rheasil­via im­pact basin on Ves­ta's south pole

August 14, 2012  This false colour to­po­graph­ic map of Ves­ta's south pole shows parts of the 500-kilo­me­tre Rheasil­via im­pact basin in shades of blue. In the cen­tre of the struc­ture is a strik­ing 20-kilo­me­tre high moun­tain shown in green, yel­low and red tones. The glob­al sur­face to­po­graph­ic mod­el of Ves­ta was gen­er­at­ed by DLR sci­en­tists us­ing thou­sands of in­di­vid­u­al im­ages through stereo pho­togram­me­try.

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Image 26/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.
Landslides in Marcia crater

Land­slides in Mar­cia crater

August 30, 2012  Mar­cia is a 58-kilo­me­tre di­am­e­ter crater near Ves­ta's equa­tor. The to­pog­ra­phy of the crater is a bit un­usu­al, as it does not have the typ­i­cal bowl shape, like that of a crater on the Moon. This is like­ly the re­sult of mass move­ments in the in­te­ri­or of the crater. Ma­te­ri­al from Mar­cia's right edge slid to its in­te­ri­or, form­ing a shal­low­er slope. The im­age shows de­tails up to a size of 70 me­tres.

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Image 27/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Overview of the asteroid Vesta

Overview of the as­ter­oid Ves­ta

September 10, 2013  Sci­en­tists from the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) have cre­at­ed an at­las of Ves­ta from about 10,000 in­di­vid­u­al im­ages of the as­ter­oid. The cam­era or­bit­ed the as­ter­oid on board NASA’s Dawn space­craft.

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Image 28/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
South pole of Vesta

South pole of Ves­ta

September 10, 2013  This im­age shows the south po­lar re­gion of as­ter­oid Ves­ta. The map was cre­at­ed by the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR).

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Image 29/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Colour-coded map of Vesta

Colour-cod­ed map of Ves­ta

September 10, 2013  The cam­era on board the Dawn space­craft im­aged the as­ter­oid Ves­ta from an al­ti­tude of 210 kilo­me­tres. Plan­e­tary re­searchers at the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) pro­cessed this da­ta to cre­ate maps and el­e­va­tion mod­els. This map em­ploys colour-cod­ing to de­pict the high and low points of the south po­lar re­gion.

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Image 30/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Unnamed mountain on Vesta

Un­named moun­tain on Ves­ta

September 25, 2017  Tow­er­ing 22 kilo­me­tres, al­most three times the height of Mount Ever­est, a still-un­named moun­tain ris­es in the cen­tre of a 450 kilo­me­tre-wide im­pact basin at the south pole of the as­ter­oid Ves­ta.

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Image 31/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
The crater Haulani on Ceres

The crater Haulani on Ceres

September 25, 2017  The crater Haulani is about 34 kilo­me­tres in di­am­e­ter, about the size of the Nördlinger Ries in the Swabi­an Alb. It does not seem to be very old yet, be­cause the edge is still sharp. The blue tones in the con­trast-en­hanced im­age are al­so in­dica­tive of this. Land­slides show that ero­sion has be­gun its set­ting work.

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Image 32/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Ahuna Mons on Ceres

Ahu­na Mons on Ceres

September 25, 2017  Ahu­na Mons on Ceres, with crater-free (there­fore ge­o­log­i­cal­ly young) slopes, ris­es some 5000 me­tres above the sur­round­ings, which are oth­er­wise pock­marked by craters. Is it a cry­o­vol­cano that spews out ice as well as la­va? Re­searchers think it is pos­si­ble.

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Image 33/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Occator crater

Oc­ca­tor crater

March 22, 2016  The Oc­ca­tor crater on dwarf plan­et Ceres shows cur­rent­ly un­ex­plained bright patch­es dot­ted across the in­ner sur­face. This true colour im­age re­veals more re­cent bluish ma­te­ri­al. The im­ages were ac­quired from a dis­tance of 1470 kilo­me­tres, and have a res­o­lu­tion of 140 me­tres per pix­el.

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Image 34/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI
Occator region on the dwarf planet Ceres

Oc­ca­tor re­gion on the dwarf plan­et Ceres

November 25, 2015  Plan­e­tary re­searchers from the Ger­man Aerospace Cen­ter (Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt; DLR) used cam­era im­ages ac­quired by the Dawn or­biter at a dis­tance of 4400 kilo­me­tres from Ceres to pro­duce this map. It shows the strik­ing Oc­ca­tor crater and the un­usu­al­ly bright spots on its in­te­ri­or.

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Image 35/42, Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)
Cracks and bright spots in the Occator crater

Cracks and bright spots in the Oc­ca­tor crater

March 22, 2016  The com­plex struc­tures of the Oc­ca­tor crater on dwarf plan­et Ceres are clear­ly vis­i­ble in the close-up im­ages ac­quired from a dis­tance of just 385 kilo­me­tres: in ad­di­tion to mys­te­ri­ous bright spots on the in­side of the crater, a large, light-coloured bulge can be seen next to in­nu­mer­able cracks and frac­tures.

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Image 36/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI
Crater with a rare filling

Crater with a rare fill­ing

September 25, 2017  At the cen­tre of the 90 kilo­me­tre-wide im­pact struc­ture Oc­ca­tor is the largest oc­cur­rence of the strange white de­posits on Ceres. These are prin­ci­pal­ly car­bon­ates, salts and car­bon­ic acid. The blue false colours al­so in­di­cate the ex­is­tence of bright de­posits as­so­ci­at­ed with sul­phuric salts, pop­u­lar­ly known as plas­ter.

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Image 37/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Ceres – an icy dwarf

Ceres – an icy dwarf

September 25, 2017  Ac­cord­ing to Dawn’s record­ings, the largest body in the Main As­ter­oid Belt could be con­struct­ed as fol­lows: A core dom­i­nat­ed by hy­drat­ed sil­i­cates, above it a thick man­tle of wa­ter ice with sil­i­cate com­po­nents and on the ex­te­ri­or a crust made up of light rocks and frozen volatile com­po­nents, main­ly wa­ter ice.

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Image 38/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
HED meteorites

HED me­te­orites

September 25, 2017  Mea­sure­ments with the spec­trom­e­ters on the Dawn probe con­firm that the howardite, eu­crite and dio­gen­ite types of me­te­orite come from the as­ter­oid Ves­ta. In the lab­o­ra­to­ry, anal­y­ses with po­larised light can now be used to pre­cise­ly de­ter­mine the min­er­al con­tent.

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Image 39/42, Credit: NASA/University of Tennessee
Dawn’s ion propulsion system

Dawn’s ion propul­sion sys­tem

September 25, 2017  If on­ly rock­etry pi­o­neers Wern­her von Braun and Sergei Ko­rolev had lived to see this! The NASA Dawn mis­sion reached its tar­get not with a con­ven­tion­al rock­et en­gine, but with a propul­sion sys­tem that slow­ly but con­stant­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed the probe us­ing a con­cen­trat­ed jet of ionised in­ert gas (xenon).

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Image 40/42, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Occator crater on Ceres

Oc­ca­tor crater on Ceres

December 14, 2016  With a di­am­e­ter of 92 kilo­me­tres, Oc­ca­tor crater is larg­er than Ty­cho crater on the Moon – which ap­pears like a bright back when seen with the naked eye. Its steep walls stand tall at over 2000 me­tres, high­er than the North face of the Eiger in the Bernese Alps. The ori­gin and na­ture of the bright spots in its in­te­ri­or is still not clear.

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Image 41/42, Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0)
Dawn spacecraft with a nebula in the background

Dawn space­craft with a neb­u­la in the back­ground

November 30, 2018  About four and a half bil­lion years ago, the Main Belt as­ter­oids formed from a disk of dust and ice par­ti­cles over the course of on­ly about 10 mil­lion years. They in­clude Ceres (right), the largest dwarf plan­et in the main as­ter­oid belt – with a di­am­e­ter of near­ly 1000 kilo­me­tres, and Ves­ta (to the left of the Dawn space­craft), the third largest body. The rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the two as­ter­oids are based on im­ages ac­quired by the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, ar­tis­ti­cal­ly mod­i­fied in ac­cor­dance with sci­en­tif­ic cri­te­ria. The back­ground im­age is al­so based on re­al­is­tic as­sump­tions and was cre­at­ed by the plan­e­tary re­searcher William Hart­mann from the Plan­e­tary Sci­ence In­sti­tute in Tuc­son (Ari­zona).

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Image 42/42, Credit: UCLA/Bill Hartmann.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft was launched on 27 September 2007, and has been in space for more than 11 years exploring the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.

Media items
  • Dawn – one mission, two heavenly bodies

    Dawn – one mis­sion, two heav­en­ly bod­ies
    Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.  |  Download
    NASA’s Dawn space­craft was launched on 27 Septem­ber 2007. On 16 Ju­ly 2011, it ar­rived at the as­ter­oid Ves­ta, which it ex­plored un­til 5 Septem­ber 2012. The space­craft then de­part­ed for the dwarf plan­et Ceres, where it will ar­rive on 6 March 2015. The Dawn mis­sion is the first to suc­ces­sive­ly study two ce­les­tial bod­ies from or­bit.
  • An encounter with Ceres

    An en­counter with Ceres
    Credit: DLR (CC-BY 3.0).  |  Download
    The NASA Dawn space­craft will ar­rive at the dwarf plan­et Ceres on 6 March 2015. Once there, it will record the sur­face with the Ger­man-de­vel­oped Fram­ing Cam­era. This im­age was ac­quired from a dis­tance of 237,000 kilo­me­tres from the dwarf plan­et.
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