Cryovolcanism Took Place on Ceres Since the Start of the Triassic

Cryovolcanism on Ceres

Authors:

Ruesch et al

Abstract:

INTRODUCTION

Classic volcanism prevalent on terrestrial planets and volatile-poor protoplanets, such as asteroid Vesta, is based on silicate chemistry and is often expressed by volcanic edifices (unless erased by impact bombardment). In ice-rich bodies with sufficiently warm interiors, cryovolcanism involving liquid brines can occur. Smooth plains on some icy satellites of the outer solar system have been suggested as possibly cryovolcanic in origin. However, evidence for cryovolcanic edifices has proven elusive. Ceres is a volatile-rich dwarf planet with an average equatorial surface temperature of ~160 K. Whether this small (~940 km diameter) body without tidal dissipation could sustain cryovolcanism has been an open question because the surface landforms and relation to internal activity were unknown.

RATIONALE

The Framing Camera onboard the Dawn spacecraft has observed >99% of Ceres’ surface at a resolution of 35 m/pixel at visible wavelengths. This wide coverage and resolution were exploited for geologic mapping and age determination. Observations with a resolution of 135 m/pixel were obtained under several different viewing geometries. The stereo-photogrammetric method applied to this data set allowed the calculation of a digital terrain model, from which morphometry was investigated. The observations revealed a 4-km-high topographic relief, named Ahuna Mons, that is consistent with a cryovolcanic dome emplacement.

RESULTS

The ~17-km-wide and 4-km-high Ahuna Mons has a distinct size, shape, and morphology. Its summit topography is concave downward, and its flanks are at the angle of repose. The morphology is characterized by (i) troughs, ridges, and hummocky areas at the summit, indicating multiple phases of activity, such as extensional fracturing, and (ii) downslope lineations on the flanks, indicating rockfalls and accumulation of slope debris. These morphometric and morphologic observations are explained by the formation of a cryovolcanic dome, which is analogous to a high-viscosity silicic dome on terrestrial planets. Models indicate that extrusions of a highly viscous melt-bearing material can lead to the buildup of a brittle carapace at the summit, enclosing a ductile core. Partial fracturing and disintegration of the carapace generates slope debris, and relaxation of the dome’s ductile core due to gravity shapes the topographic profile of the summit. Modeling of this final phase of dome relaxation and reproduction of the topographic profile requires an extruded material of high viscosity, which is consistent with the mountain’s morphology. We constrained the age of the most recent activity on Ahuna Mons to be within the past 210 ± 30 million years.

CONCLUSION

Cryovolcanic activity during the geologically recent past of Ceres constrains its thermal and chemical history. We propose that hydrated salts with low eutectic temperatures and low thermal conductivities enabled the presence of cryomagmatic liquids within Ceres. These salts are the product of global aqueous alteration, a key process for Ceres’ evolution as recorded by the aqueously altered, secondary minerals observed on the surface.

Are There Trans Neptunian Objects in the Asteroid Belt?

CAPTURE OF TRANS-NEPTUNIAN PLANETESIMALS IN THE MAIN ASTEROID BELT

Authors:

Vokrouhlický et al

Abstract:

The orbital evolution of the giant planets after nebular gas was eliminated from the Solar System but before the planets reached their final configuration was driven by interactions with a vast sea of leftover planetesimals. Several variants of planetary migration with this kind of system architecture have been proposed. Here, we focus on a highly successful case, which assumes that there were once five planets in the outer Solar System in a stable configuration: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and a Neptune-like body. Beyond these planets existed a primordial disk containing thousands of Pluto-sized bodies, ~50 million D > 100 km bodies, and a multitude of smaller bodies. This system eventually went through a dynamical instability that scattered the planetesimals and allowed the planets to encounter one another. The extra Neptune-like body was ejected via a Jupiter encounter, but not before it helped to populate stable niches with disk planetesimals across the Solar System. Here, we investigate how interactions between the fifth giant planet, Jupiter, and disk planetesimals helped to capture disk planetesimals into both the asteroid belt and first-order mean-motion resonances with Jupiter. Using numerical simulations, we find that our model produces the right proportion of P- and D-type asteroids in the inner, central, and outer main belt, while also populating the Hilda and Thule regions in Jupiter's 3/2 and 4/3 resonances. Moreover, the largest observed P/D types in each sub-population are an excellent fit to our captured population results (within uncertainties). The model produces a factor of ~10 overabundance of diameter D > 10 km P/D types in the main belt, but this mismatch can likely be explained by various removal mechanisms (e.g., collision evolution over 4 Gyr, dynamical losses via Yarkovsky thermal forces over 4 Gyr, thermal destruction of the planetesimals en route to the inner solar system). Overall, our instability model provides a more satisfying match to constraints than that of Levison et al., and it provides us with strong supporting evidence that the five giant planet instability model is reasonable. Our results lead us to predict that D-type asteroids found in the near-Earth object population on low delta-V orbits with Earth are the surviving relics from the same source population that now make up the Kuiper Belt, the irregular satellites, and the Jupiter Trojans. The singular Tagish Lake meteorite, a primitive sample unlike other carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, is likely a fragment from a D-type asteroid implanted into the inner main belt. This would effectively make it the first known hand sample with the same composition as Kuiper Belt objects.

NASA Declines to SEnd Dawn Spacecraft to Another Asteroid

A senior review of NASA’s planetary science missions has concluded the Dawn spacecraft should remain in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres rather than venture to another asteroid as project officials proposed.

NASA announced July 1 the outcome of a review of extended planetary science missions, including the approval of plans to send New Horizons past a distant Kuiper Belt object and the extension of seven other missions at the moon and Mars.

Dawn, which completed its primary mission June 30, had proposed an extended mission where the spacecraft would leave its current orbit around Ceres and travel to another asteroid. Project officials declined to name that asteroid, saying that they would identify it if NASA approved the extended mission.

However, in a mission update posted to the Dawn web site late June 30, only to be removed within minutes, the mission did identify that destination: the asteroid 145 Adeona, a main belt asteroid about 150 kilometers across that Dawn would fly by in May 2019. The NASA statement July 1 about the mission extension confirmed the planned target was Adeona.

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Ceres, we Knew you not

The asteroid belt hides lots of mysteries of the solar system’s past, but perhaps no place holds more mysteries than Ceres. It’s an oddball place — a dwarf planet in the midst of our solar system’s belt of smaller debris. And it’s an ancient world possibly left over from the era when the planets first came together.

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Looking at Ceres

At last week's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, I enjoyed a large number of talks about Ceres, which Dawn is now orbiting at an altitude of merely 385 kilometers. Several sessions worth of talks considered a wealth of new data that has been acquired since the last time I attended scientific sessions on Dawn, at lower altitudes and hence more detail. All that freshly acquired data made for talks bursting with pretty pictures and data but relatively thin on interpretation and with little coordination (yet) across data sets, which makes them a bit hard to summarize briefly. Deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond summed the situation up well at the press briefing: "Clearly, we have a lot of work to do to put together a self-consistent story among all these different data sets."

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Is the Grand Tack Model Compatible with Our Asteroid Belt?

Is the Grand Tack model compatible with the orbital distribution of main belt asteroids?

Authors:

Deienno et al

Abstract:

The Asteroid Belt is characterized by the radial mixing of bodies with different physical properties, a very low mass compared to Minimum Mass Solar Nebula expectations and has an excited orbital distribution, with eccentricities and inclinations covering the entire range of values allowed by the constraints of dynamical stability. Models of the evolution of the Asteroid Belt show that the origin of its structure is strongly linked to the process of terrestrial planet formation. The Grand Tack model presents a possible solution to the conundrum of reconciling the small mass of Mars with the properties of the Asteroid Belt, including the mass depletion, radial mixing and orbital excitation. However, while the inclination distribution produced in the Grand Tack model is in good agreement with the one observed, the eccentricity distribution is skewed towards values larger than those found today. Here, we evaluate the evolution of the orbital properties of the Asteroid Belt from the end of the Grand Tack model (at the end of the gas nebula phase when planets emerge from the dispersing gas disk), throughout the subsequent evolution of the Solar System including an instability of the Giant Planets approximately 400 Myr later. Before the instability, the terrestrial planets were modeled on dynamically cold orbits with Jupiter and Saturn locked in a 3:2 mean motion resonance. The model continues for an additional 4.1 Gyr after the giant planet instability. Our results show that the eccentricity distribution obtained in the Grand Tack model evolves towards one very similar to that currently observed, and the semimajor axis distribution does the same. The inclination distribution remains nearly unchanged with a slight preference for depletion at low inclination; this leads to the conclusion that the inclination distribution at the end of the Grand Tack is a bit over-excited. Also, we constrain the primordial eccentricities of Jupiter and Saturn, which have a major influence on the dynamical evolution of the Asteroid Belt and its final orbital structure.

To Fly Over Ceres

Ceres has a Thin, Hazy Atmosphere, Salty Craters, (probably) Cryovolcanoes and (possibly) Originated out by Pluto

The verdict is in — mostly. The bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres are probably made of salt, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has found.

Mixed with the salt are bits of rock and frozen water. When sunlight hits the blend, the ice sublimates into a misty haze above two of Ceres’s craters, researchers report in the 10 December issue of Nature.

But mission scientists are not sure how the salt, ice and haze are interlinked. “The whole picture we do not have yet,” says Andreas Nathues, a planetary scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Goettingen, Germany, and the paper’s lead author1.

Dawn has also found ammonia-rich clays on Ceres, a second Nature paper reports2. Ammonia is more common in the frigid outer Solar System than in the asteroid belt where Ceres reigns. The discovery suggests that Ceres may have collected bits of outer Solar System material — or even that it was born near Neptune before migrating inward.

Both papers are the first major published results from Dawn. The spacecraft, which launched in 2007, visited the asteroid Vesta in 2011–12 and arrived at Ceres in March.

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The Water and Ice of Ceres

Ceres water regime: surface temperature, water sublimation and transient exo(atmo)sphere

Authors:

Formisano et al

Abstract:

Recent observations of water emission around Ceres suggest the presence of an ice layer on or beneath the surface of this asteroid. Several mechanisms have been suggested to explain these plumes, among which cometary-like sublimation seems to be plausible, since there is a correlation between the magnitude of the emission and the change in the heliocentric distance along the orbit. In this work, we applied a comet sublimation model to study the plausible scenarios that match with Herschel observations of the water flux (1026 molecules s−1). Each scenario is characterized by a well-defined set of physical and orbital parameters. Moreover, a study of the dynamic evolution of the H2O plume has been performed, showing that an optically thin transient atmospheric envelope, with a typical timescale of some tens of days, can be maintained by the H2O surface emission. Our simulations could be useful theoretical support for the Dawn NASA mission by giving a better understanding of the physical conditions for water sublimation and ice stability.

Solar System Asteroid Belt Best Explained as Remnants of Planetary Formation Collisions, not Pristine, Remnant Planetesimals

Erosive Hit-and-Run Impact Events: Debris Unbound

Authors:

Sarid et al

Abstract:

Erosive collisions among planetary embryos in the inner solar system can lead to multiple remnant bodies, varied in mass, composition and residual velocity. Some of the smaller, unbound debris may become available to seed the main asteroid belt. The makeup of these collisionally produced bodies is different from the canonical chondritic composition, in terms of rock/iron ratio and may contain further shock-processed material. Having some of the material in the asteroid belt owe its origin from collisions of larger planetary bodies may help in explaining some of the diversity and oddities in composition of different asteroid groups.

You Salty Dog! Ceres' Bright Spots are Probably SALT!

After months of probing ever-sharper images of dwarf planet Ceres sent back by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, the space agency thinks it has a pretty good guess about the source of a series of mysterious bright spots reflecting back from the surface of the largest object in the asteroid belt.

"We believe this is a huge salt deposit," Dawn's principal investigator Chris Russell told a crowd of scientists Monday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Nantes, France, in a talk that was posted online Thursday. "We know it's not ice and we're pretty sure it's salt, but we don't know exactly what salt at the present time. "

This may come as something of a surprise to many watching the drama on Ceres unfold who guessed that the spots were reflective ice, given that the dwarf planet is believed to harbor a subsurface ocean that could have been exposed and then frozen by asteroid impacts.

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Where the Chelyabinsk Meteorite Came From

Chelyabinsk meteorite explains unusual spectral properties of Baptistina Asteroid Family

Authors:

Reddy et al

Abstract:

We investigated the spectral and compositional properties of Chelyabinsk meteorite to identify its possible parent body in the main asteroid belt. Our analysis shows that the meteorite contains two spectrally distinct but compositionally indistinguishable components of LL5 chondrite and shock blackened/impact melt material. Our X-ray diffraction analysis confirms that the two lithologies of the Chelyabinsk meteorite are extremely similar in modal mineralogy. The meteorite is compositionally similar to LL chondrite and its most probable parent asteroid in the main belt is a member of the Flora family. Intimate mixture of LL5 chondrite and shock blackened/impact melt material from Chelyabinsk provides a spectral match with (8) Flora, the largest asteroid in the Flora family. The Baptistina family and Flora family overlap each other in dynamical space. Mineralogical analysis of (298) Baptistina and 9 small family members shows that their surface compositions are similar to LL chondrites, although their absorption bands are subdued and albedos lower when compared to typical S-type asteroids. A range of intimate mixtures of LL5 chondrite and shock blackened/impact melt material from Chelyabinsk provides spectral matches for all these BAF members. We suggest that the presence of a significant shock/impact melt component in the surface regolith of BAF members could be the cause of lower albedo and subdued absorption bands. The parent asteroid of BAF was either a member of the Flora family or had the same basic composition as the Floras (LL Chondrite). The shock pressures produced during the impact event generated enough impact melt or shock blackening to alter the spectral properties of BAF, but keep the BAF composition largely unchanged.

The Flora Family of Asteroids

Defining the Flora Family: Orbital Properties, Reflectance Properties and Age

Authors:

Dykhuis et al

Abstract:

The Flora family resides in the densely populated inner main belt, bounded in semimajor axis by the ν6 secular resonance and the Jupiter 3:1 mean motion resonance. The presence of several large families that overlap dynamically with the Floras (e.g., the Vesta, Baptistina, and Nysa-Polana families), and the removal of a significant fraction of Floras via the nearby ν6 resonance complicates the Flora family's distinction in both proper orbital elements and reflectance properties. Here we use orbital information from the Asteroids Dynamic Site, color information from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and albedo information from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer to obtain the median orbital and reflectance properties of the Floras by sampling the core of the family in multidimensional phase space. We find the median Flora SDSS colors to be a∗ = 0.126 ± 0.007 and i−z=−0.037±0.007; the median Flora albedo is pV = 0.291 ± 0.012. These properties allow us to define ranges for the Flora family in orbital and reflectance properties, as required for a detailed dynamical study. We use the young Karin family, for which we have an age determined via direct backward integration of members' orbits, to calibrate the Yarkovsky drift rates for the Flora family without having to estimate the Floras' material properties. The size-dependent dispersion of the Flora members in semimajor axis (the "V" plot) then yields an age for the family of 910+160−120 My, with the uncertainty dominated by the uncertainty in the material properties of the family members (e.g., density and surface thermal properties). We discuss the effects on our age estimate of two independent processes that both introduce obliquity variations among the family members on short (My) timescales: 1) the capture of Flora members in spin-orbit resonance, and 2) YORP-driven obliquity variation.

Asteroidal Beauty Pageant: Comparing Vesta to the Rest

The Cratering Record, Chronology and Surface Ages of (4) Vesta in Comparison to Smaller Asteroids and the Ages of HED Meteorites

Authors:

Schmedemann et al

Abstract:

We derived model functions for the crater production size-frequency distribution and chronology of the asteroids 951 Gaspra, 243 Ida, 21 Lutetia and 4 Vesta, based on a lunar-like crater production function and a lunar-like chronology with a smooth exponential decay in impact rate for the first ~1 Ga of Solar System history. For Gaspra, Ida and Lutetia we find surface ages roughly in agreement with published data. Using the same approach for Vesta leads to results with high correlation to Ar-Ar reset ages of HED meteorites, for which a strong dynamical and spectroscopic connection to Vesta has been found. In contrast to recently published young formation ages of the Rheasilvia and Veneneia basins of about 1 and 2 Ga, respectively, we find for Rheasilvia a formation age of 3.5±0.1 Ga and for the Veneneia formation a lower limit of 3.7±0.1 Ga. For comparison we also give surface model ages for a preliminary version of a chronology (pers. comm. D.P. O'Brien) based on the Late Heavy Bombardment theory. Error bars presented in our work stem only from statistical analysis of measured crater distributions and do not include the uncertainty of the used chronology model.

How Vesta's Asymmetrical Craters Formed

Asymmetric craters on Vesta: Impact on sloping surfaces

Authors:

Krohn et al

Abstract:

Cratering processes on planetary bodies happen continuously and cause the formation of a large variety of impact crater morphologies. On Vesta whose surface has been imaged at high resolution during a 14 months orbital mission by the Dawn spacecraft we identified a substantial number of craters with an asymmetrical shape. These craters, in total a number of 2892 ranging in diameter from 0.3 km to 43 km, are characterized by a sharp crater rim on the uphill side and a smooth one on the downhill side. The formation of these unusual asymmetric impact craters is controlled by Vesta's remarkable topographic relief. In order to understand the processes creating such unusual crater forms on a planetary body with a topography like Vesta we carried out the following work packages: (1) the asymmetric craters show various morphologies and therefore can be subdivided into distinct classes by their specific morphologic details; (2) using a digital terrain model (DTM), the craters are grouped into bins of slope angles for further statistical analysis; (3) for a subset of these asymmetric craters, the size-frequency distributions of smaller craters superimposed on their crater floors and continuous ejecta are measured in order to derive cratering model ages for the selected craters and to constrain possible post-impact processes; (4) three-dimensional hydrocode simulations using the iSALE-3D code are applied to the data set in order to quantify the effects of topography on crater shape and ejecta distribution. We identified five different classes (A to E) of asymmetric craters. Primarily, we focus on class A in this work. The global occurrence of these crater classes compared with a slope map clearly shows that these asymmetric crater types exclusively form on slopes. We found that slopes, especially slopes>20°, prevent the deposition of ejected material in the uphill direction, and slumping material superimposed the deposit of ejecta on the downhill side. The combination of these two processes explains the local accumulation of material in this direction. In the subset of asymmetric craters which we used for crater counts, our results show that no post-impact processes have taken place since floors and continuous ejecta in each crater show comparable cratering model ages within the uncertainties of the cratering chronology model. Therefore the formation, or modification, of the asymmetric crater forms by processes other than impact can be excluded with some certainty.

Did Ceres Form Beyond the Snowline?

On the possible origin of the asteroid (1) Ceres

Author:

Rogozin

Abstract:

The last three decades the asteroid (1) Ceres is an object of the intensive ground-and space-based observations. A new unusual contributing to these studies represents the recent detection of localized sources of water vapour releasing from its surface at a rate about 6 kg s-1 (K\"uppers et al 2014). A drastic distinction between asteroid (1) Ceres and nearest the large asteroid (4) Vesta in terms of their composition and appearance emphasizes an urgent state of a problem of the possible origin of Ceres in the main asteroid belt. By analogy with the early assumptions of some well-known astronomers of Mercury and Mars as the escaped satellites of their host planets we have put forward and semi-empirically have justified a hypothesis for the plausible origin of Ceres as the satellite of a disrupted planet in the past orbited the Sun of ~ 5 AU. The orbital location of this host of Ceres beyond the snow line of the Solar System explains a formation the icy mantle of Ceres, which appears may be a water vapour source.

Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro Studied

Hubble Space Telescope Investigation of Main-Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro

Authors:

Jewitt et al

Abstract:

We report new observations of the prototype main-belt comet (active asteroid) 133P/Elst-Pizarro taken at high angular resolution using the Hubble Space Telescope. The object has three main components; a) a point-like nucleus, b) a long, narrow antisolar dust tail and c) a short, sunward anti-tail. There is no resolved coma. The nucleus has a mean absolute magnitude H_V = 15.70+/-0.10 and a lightcurve range 0.42 mag., the latter corresponding to projected dimensions 3.6 x 5.4 km (axis ratio 1.5:1), at the previously measured geometric albedo of 0.05+/-0.02. We explored a range of continuous and impulsive emission models to simultaneously fit the measured surface brightness profile, width and position angle of the antisolar tail. Preferred fits invoke protracted emission, over a period of 150 days or less, of dust grains following a differential power-law size distribution with index 3.25 less than q less than 3.5 and having a wide range of sizes. Ultra-low surface brightness dust projected in the sunward direction is a remnant from emission activity occurring in previous orbits, and consists of the largest (less than cm-sized) particles. Ejection velocities of one micron-sized particles are comparable to the ~1.8 m/s gravitational escape speed of the nucleus, while larger particles are released at speeds less than the gravitational escape velocity. The observations are consistent with, but do not prove, a hybrid hypothesis in which mass loss is driven by gas drag from the sublimation of near-surface water ice, but escape is aided by centripetal acceleration from the rotation of the elongated nucleus. No plausible alternative hypothesis has been identified.

An Animation of the Asteroids of the Solar System

How did Those Asteroids get so 'wet?'

Aqueous alteration on main belt primitive asteroids: results from visible spectroscopy

Authors:

Fornasier et al

Abstract:

This work focuses on the study of the aqueous alteration process which acted in the main belt and produced hydrated minerals on the altered asteroids. The aqueous alteration is particularly important for unraveling the processes occurring during the earliest times of the Solar System history, as it can give information both on the asteroids thermal evolution and on the localization of water sources in the asteroid belt. We present new spectral observations in the visible region of 80 asteroids belonging to the primitive classes C, G, F, B and P. We combine the present observations with the visible spectra of asteroids available in the literature for a total of 600 primitive main belt asteroids. Our analysis shows that the aqueous alteration sequence starts from the P-type objects, practically unaltered, and increases through the F, B, C, and G asteroids. Around 50% of the observed C-type asteroids show absorption features in the vis. range due to hydrated silicates, implying that more than 70% of them will have a 3 μm absorption band and thus hydrated minerals on their surfaces. The process dominates in primitive asteroids located between 2.3 and 3.1 AU, that is at smaller heliocentric distances than previously suggested. The aqueous alteration process dominates in the 50--240 km sized primitive asteroids, while it is less effective for bodies smaller than 50 km. No correlation is found between the aqueous alteration process and the asteroids albedo or orbital elements. Comparing the ∼ 0.7 μm band parameters of hydrated silicates and CM2 carbonaceous chondrites, we see that the band center of meteorites is at longer wavelengths than that of asteroids. This difference on center positions may be attributed to different minerals abundances, and to the fact that CM2 available on Earth might not be representative of the whole aqueous altered asteroids population.

Evidence from Vesta of the Origin of Asteroid Water

The Formation of Jupiter, the Jovian Early Bombardment and the Delivery of Water to the Asteroid Belt: The Case of (4) Vesta

Authors:

Turrini et al

Abstract:

The asteroid (4) Vesta, parent body of the Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenite meteorites, is one of the first bodies that formed, mostly from volatile-depleted material, in the Solar System. The Dawn mission recently provided evidence that hydrated material was delivered to Vesta, possibly in a continuous way, over the last 4 Ga, while the study of the eucritic meteorites revealed a few samples that crystallized in presence of water and volatile elements. The formation of Jupiter and probably its migration occurred in the period when eucrites crystallized, and triggered a phase of bombardment that caused icy planetesimals to cross the asteroid belt. In this work, we study the flux of icy planetesimals on Vesta during the Jovian Early Bombardment and, using hydrodynamic simulations, the outcome of their collisions with the asteroid. We explore how the migration of the giant planet would affect the delivery of water and volatile materials to the asteroid and we discuss our results in the context of the geophysical and collisional evolution of Vesta. In particular, we argue that the observational data are best reproduced if the bulk of the impactors was represented by 1-2 km wide planetesimals and if Jupiter underwent a limited (a fraction of au) displacement.