Axomama Crater on Ceres

This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft highlights Axomama Crater, the small crater shown to the right of center. It is 3 miles (5 kilometers) in diameter and located just inside the western rim of Dantu Crater. Axomama is one of the newly named craters on Ceres. Its sharp edges indicate recent emplacement by a small impact.

This picture also shows details on the floor of Dantu, which comprises most of the image. The many fractures and the central pit (see also PIA20303) are reminiscent of Occator Crater and could point to a similar formation history, involving activity driven by the presence of liquid water in the subsurface.

Axomama is named after the Incan goddess of potato, or "Potato-mother."

NASA's Dawn spacecraft acquired this picture during its extended mission on July 24, 2016, from its low altitude mapping orbit at about 240 miles (385 kilometers) above the surface. The center coordinates of this image are 24 degrees north latitude, 131 degrees east longitude.

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, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

For a complete list of Dawn mission participants, visit http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.

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