The brightest region on the dwarf planet Ceres, located in the Occator crater, contains the highest concentration of carbonates outside Earth, NASA said.
According to the American Space Agency, the new study of Ceres was the result of the work of scientists on the Dawn mission. “This is the first time we have discovered this kind of mineral in such a volume outside the solar system,” said lead author Maria Cristina De Sanctis of the National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome. The Occator crater is considered young: its age is 80 million years. The crater is 92 km wide, the walls are 2 km high. The Dawn probe arrived at Ceres in early March 2015 after completing the first phase of its mission, during which the asteroid Vesta was studied.
Photo: nasa.gov
According to De Sanctis, the main mineral in the crater is sodium carbonate (Na2CO3). On Earth, it is found in a hydrothermal environment. According to scientists, the mineral is contained inside Ceres, where the temperature should be much higher than previously thought. The carbonate could be “liberated” by the collision of the planet with a giant asteroid. However, scientists insist that the internal processes of Ceres played a greater role than the impact of an asteroid. The researchers theorized that the presence of carbonate on Ceres could be indicative of underground bodies of water, possibly the ocean.