Measuring just 16 mi. across, Kupalo Crater is one of the freshest on Ceres. The bright material on the crater walls and rim may be the same salt deposits that attracted attention as the spacecraft used its ion thrusters to enter orbit. This image was collected on Jan. 12.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Ejecta from a younger crater just north of its rim partly covers the floor of the Messor Crater on Ceres, in the dwarf planet’s northern mid latitudes. In this image collected on Dec. 19, image resolution is 120 ft. per pixel at the 25-mi.-wide feature. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit two bodies beyond the Earth-Moon system.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Cooling rock melted in an impact may have produced these fractures on the floor of the crater Dantu, imaged by Dawn on Dec. 21, 2015, from its lowest orbit and in earlier passes from higher altitudes. The crater Tyco on Earth’s Moon displays similar features, which also may have been produced with internal forces uplifted the floor after the crater was formed.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Walls collapsing during the formation of this crater on Ceres probably formed the scarps visible in the 20-mi.-dia. crater just west of the larger Dantu Crater. Dawn imaged scarps like these on the floor of the Rheasilvia Crater on the protoplanet Vesta as it orbited there in 2011-12. Dawn’s primary mission is scheduled to end on June 30, but it will continue in its low-altitude mapping orbit at Ceres beyond that date.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
Long shadows darken the south polar region of Ceres, imaged by Dawn on Dec. 10 when the Sun was near the horizon to the north.
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is now within 240 mi. of the dwarf planet Ceres, and will remain there indefinitely. Images collected at that altitude reveal similarities with Earth’s Moon, and unique features that highlight the wondrous variety of our Solar System.
