from Part II - Key Results from Dawn’s Exploration of Vesta and Ceres
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2022
The Dawn orbiter mission has revealed the mineralogical and chemical composition of Vesta’s surface materials and constraints on its interior structure. The surface is composed of breccias of basalt and ultramafic rocks, contaminated by exogenic carbonaceous chondrite.At the center of the asteroid is a metallic core about half the diameter of the body, and gravity data provide information on the thicknesses and densities of the mantle and crust.Huge, overlapping impact basins expose rocks of the lower crust and mantle. Howardite–eucrite–diogenite (HED) meteorites are samples of Vesta, mostly excavated by the giant impacts and delivered to Earth via an orbital resonance with Jupiter.Petrologic and geochemical studies of HEDs constrain interpretations of Dawn’s spectral and geochemical data, and offer otherwise unobtainable insights into the asteroid’s origin, bulk composition, global differentiation, impact history, and geochronology.Major unresolved questions include whether Vesta had an early magma ocean, as well as the source of “missing” olivine in mantle rocks, and a possible role for fluids. As the sole surviving rocky protoplanet, Vesta provides a unique perspective on the nebular raw materials that accreted to form the terrestrial planets.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.