Dawn LAMO Image 28

This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the interior of the 40-mile wide (60-kilometer wide) crater Datan, which is superimposed on the northwestern rim of the larger crater Geshtin (50 miles or 79 kilometers wide). The area at right, above the rim of Datan, is within Geshtin.

Both features have densely cratered floors, generally speaking, which identifies them as quite old. A smoother, less cratered area is visible on the floor of Datan that subdues features underneath. This material may be ejecta from a smaller (unnamed) crater, younger than Datan, which is superimposed on its northern rim and not visible in this view.

This trio of craters is visible in view acquired by Dawn earlier in its mission, from a higher altitude, in PIA20000.

The image is centered at approximately 58 degrees north latitude, 255 degrees east longitude. Dawn captured the scene on Jan. 7, 2016, from its low-altitude mapping orbit (LAMO), at an altitude of 242 miles (389 kilometers) above Ceres. The image resolution is 118 feet (36 meters) per pixel.

Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK, Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, see http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.

For more information about the Dawn mission, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov.