A special collection of studies published on August 10, 2020 in the journals Nature Astronomy, Nature Geoscience, and Nature Communications suggests that Ceres, a dwarf planet discovered by the Italian polymath Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801, may be an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface.
Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, massive enough to be shaped by its gravity, which enabled the NASA Dawn spacecraft to capture high-resolution images of its surface. It is about 592 miles across, 14 times smaller than Pluto.
Between 2011 and 2018, NASA’s Dawn mission embarked on a 4.3 billion-mile journey to Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest objects in our solar system’s main asteroid belt. This new research is based on observations made during Dawn’s orbit of Ceres between 2015 and 2018.
Dawn was focused on the 57-mile-wide Occator Crater, a 22-million-year-old feature that showcased bright spots, which were discovered to be sodium carbonate, or a compound including oxygen, carbon, and sodium. The team said the salt deposits looked like they had built up within the last 2 million years.
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Data from the end of Dawn’s mission revealed an extensive reservoir of brine beneath the crater. It is 25 miles deep and extends out for hundreds of miles. Dawn’s data also indicated the presence of hydrated chloride salts at the crater’s centre, called Cerealia Facula. It is the first time hydrohalite has been found outside Earth.
Scientists are quite intrigued by the idea that liquid water can remain preserved on dwarf planets and asteroids. According to scientists, when the impact that created the crater struck Ceres, it may have allowed the reservoir to deposit bright salts in the crater by fracturing the planet’s crust. As the fractures reached the salty reservoirs, the brine was able to reach the surface of the crater floor. As the water evaporated, a bright, salty crust remained behind.
There are also mounds and hills on the crater, probably created when flows of water froze in place, suggesting geologic activity on Ceres. These conical hills are similar to pingos or small mountains made of ice found in the Polar Regions. These structures reveal that Ceres actually experienced cryovolcanic activity, or ice volcanoes, beginning around 9 million years ago. The process is likely ongoing, allowing brine to continue percolating to the surface.
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