New Look at Crater Ockrator

New Look at Crater Ockrator

This is a mosaic of a hill located on the west side of the fakula Cerealia, captured by NASA Dawn spacecraft on June 22, 2018.

On June 6, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft reached its lowest and final orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres. This made it possible to get thousands of amazing pictures and other scientific data.

The ship was established in an orbit 35 km above the surface of Ceres and looked through the crater Occrator. For 3 years of low orbit, the early minimum distance was 385 km, so the new orbit reveals a greater focus on the topography of the planet.

It was possible to capture amazing details of the relationship between bright and dark materials in the “Fakula Vinalii” area. In the visible and infrared cartographic spectrometer, Dawn recorded bright precipitates of sodium carbonate, a material found in evaporative terrestrial sediments.

New Look at Crater Ockrator

This is a large snapshot of the “Vakuliy fakuly” in the Okkrator crater, obtained by NASA Dawn spacecraft on June 14, 2018 with an altitude of 39 km

Most of the data will help resolve key questions about the origin of “fakul” - the largest deposits of carbonates observed outside the Earth and, possibly, on Mars. What interests him now is how it appeared on the surface: from a shallow subsurface reservoir with mineral water or a deeper salt source through cracks?

Also, observations at low altitude in various Dawn instruments allow us to study the composition of Ceres on a more subtle scale, shedding light on the origin of the materials found on the surface.

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