Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Newly-released images produced by the Dawn spacecraft show what the Ceres looks like from a distance of just 2,700 miles from its surface, and a new NASA-developed video animation shows what it would be like to complete a flyover of the dwarf planet.
According to NASA, the one-minute video was created using images collected by Dawn during its first mapping orbit of Ceres (the largest asteroid between Mars and Jupiter), which took place at an altitude of 8,400 miles, and navigational images taken from 3,200 miles away.
Using those images, the US space agency was able to render a three-dimensional terrain model of the dwarf planet, allowing the video to provide “dramatic flyover views” of the “mysterious” and “heavily cratered” world. NASA added that the vertical dimension has been exaggerated by a factor of two, and that a star field was added to the background, as well.
Ceres may have underground water, a weak atmosphere
The Dawn spacecraft, which is part of an ongoing NASA mission led by UCLA professor of space physics and planetary science Christopher Russell, arrived at Ceres back in March after studying the “minor planet” Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. The probe is currently scheduled to spend more than a year studying the dwarf planet.
While scientists have learned a great deal about the conditions that existed at the very start of the solar system by studying meteorites that had fallen to Earth and had originated from Vesta, Ceres has produced no such meteorites, Russell explained. This suggests that the two objects may be vastly different from one another, and while there was little evidence indicating that water could be found on Vesta, Ceres may have substantial quantities of H2O beneath its crust.
“Everything we learn from Ceres will be absolutely new. We approach it in awe and almost total ignorance,” he said in a statement, adding that the presence of ice or liquid water could “affect the time for relaxation of craters and mountains on Ceres and reduce the height of the topography compared to Vesta, and will affect minerals on the surface.”
Russell, who leads the team that oversees Dawn’s scientific research, analyzing and interpreting data from the spacecraft, also suggested that Ceres (unlike Vesta) could have a weak atmosphere and may even be home to biological life. He and his colleagues expect that the mission will help them learn more about Ceres’ size, shape, composition and internal structure, as well as greater insight into the conditions under which both it and Vesta originally formed.
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