Sharp crater rim with dark material and boulders - Nasa Dawn Mission Image of the Day 2 March 2012

Dawn Mission: News & Events > Sharp crater rim with dark material and boulders

This Dawn FC (framing camera) image shows part of the sharp, fresh rim of a large crater in the top part of the image. There is some bright material slumping towards the center of this crater but this is mostly overshadowed by the dark material, which has a splotchy appearance and is reasonably densely distributed across the part of the crater visible in this image. Around the middle part of the crater rim there are some boulders, which are identified by the dark shadows that they cast. These boulders are probably also slumping towards the center of this crater. The region surrounding this crater is reasonably smooth, which suggests that it is covered by fine-grained ejecta material.

This image is located in Vesta’s Urbinia quadrangle and the center of the image is 63.3 degrees south latitude, 311.0 degrees east longitude. NASA’s Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on Dec. 13, 2011. This image was taken through the camera’s clear filter. The distance to the surface of Vesta is 272 kilometers (163 miles) and the image has a resolution of about 25 meters (82 feet) per pixel. This image was acquired during the LAMO (low-altitude mapping orbit) phase of the mission.

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Image Credit: NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA