Organic compounds and salt deposits found in Urvara crater on Ceres

Data from NASA's Dawn mission, evaluated for the first time, suggest that brine welled up from the depths in the Urvara crater and organic compounds were deposited. The third-largest crater on the dwarf planet Ceres was geologically active at least once more, many millions of years after its formation. In a recent study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU) and the National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) in India presented the most detailed investigation of the Urvara crater to date.

For the first time, they evaluated camera data from the last phase of NASA's Dawn space mission, which revealed geological structures only a few meters in size. The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around the dwarf planet in 2015 and studied it closely for about three and a half years. Like Occator crater, Urvara crater may have been the site of cryovolcanic activity, the researchers say.

For further details see https://www.mps.mpg.de/organische-verbindungen-und-salzablagerungenim-u…

Original publication:
A. Nathues, M. Hoffmann, N. Schmedemann, R. Sakar, G. Thangjam, K. Mengel, J. Hernandez, H. Hiesinger, J.H. and Pasckert: The Urvara basin on Ceres – brine residues and organics, Nature Communications, 22. Link