NASA's Dawn spacecraft has released a set of fresh images of dwarf planet Ceres that, according to the researchers, contain planet's "darkest secrets." The recent research findings are based on the discovery of craters that were discovered by the research team recently.
According to recent research, some parts of the craters identified by the team previously are "cast in a permanent shadow" and they end up creating traps that can collect ice deposits for a period of million of years.
According to Norbert Schorghofer, lead author of the study, Ceres has been already an ice-rich body. The extra ice present in the trap is significant because the research team believes that it may hold clues to how ice appeared on the Moon and the origin of ice on both the celestial bodies could be the same.
During the study, a team led by Schorghofer reconstructed the topography of Ceres's northern hemisphere using stereo images captures by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. The pictures showed craters and plains along the surface of the dwarf planet.
The team ran the terrain alongside a computer model to identify the movement of shadows over a year. In addition, the team identified the specific areas that received sunlight. This enabled researchers to identify large areas that kept permanently shadowed and totaled around 695 square miles. The next step of the research team is to figure out what exactly constituted these craters.
The study findings have emerged amidst news that NASA has decided to extend the Dawn mission and to keep the spacecraft on the dwarf planet for an extended duration. Since the dwarf planet is a part of the orbit that is nearest to the sun, the American space agency is planning to conduct long-term observations of Ceres.
The complete details of the study have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
