This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the western rim of Occator Crater. The outside of the crater's sharp, fresh rim is covered by an ejecta layer with a low crater density. Inside and outside the crater are small fractures trending toward northwest. Several small, bright patches of material can be seen along the rim.
The image is centered at approximately 19.4 degrees north latitude, 238.8 degrees east longitude. Dawn captured the scene on Jan. 2, 2016, from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), at an altitude of 231 miles (371 kilometers) above Ceres. The image resolution is 112 feet (34 meters) per pixel.
Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.
For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA