Nasa has revealed its observations of a trip to Ceres, the mysterious world in the asteroid belt.
Ceres is a dwarf planet, and the largest of the enormous number of objects found in the ring of rocks between Mars and Jupiter.
Now, scientists using data from observations of Nasa’s world have revealed a host of new information about that distant dwarf planet.
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Ceres is about 600 miles wide, and lies less than three times as far from Earth as the Sun. As such, it is farthest from us, but close enough to experience the warmth of the sun.
Such worlds are one of the many hopes for finding life in our solar system, and scientists have suggested that recent findings will help inform the search for alien life on dwarf planets such as Ceres.
“Long believed to be a primitive body, Ceres is now an ocean world with deep brines on a regional and potentially global scale,” wrote Nasa’s Julie Castillo-Rogez, a planetary scientist who did not work on the study. She called for more research and a follow-up mission that could study the evolution of the planet – and its “potential habitability”.
The new results come from the spacecraft Dawn, which ran from 2015 to 2018, ran Ceres, when the fuel ran. Just before it did, it orbited Ceres’ surface, targeting the crater of the Occupier, a 20-million-year-old feature that saw it emit a strange glow.
Research shows that Ceres is an ocean world, and that it has been geologically active in the recent past.
And it adds even more wonder to the planet, suggesting that the various glowing parts of the surface were formed from different sources.
The findings are discussed in seven new articles published in Nature journals, and provide a variety of new information about the dwarf planet.
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Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust that stands three light-years high, bursting with gas jets of inverted stellar stars, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
Nasa / ESA / STScI
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The first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
Nasa / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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Death of a star: This image from Nandra’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
Nasa
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Arrokoth, the farthest object ever explored, pictured here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth
Getty
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An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic matter
Nasa
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The first ever image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a worldwide collaboration involving Nasa, and released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole in the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole inhabits about 54 million light-years from Earth
Getty
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Pluto, as pictured by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft when it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
Nasa / APL / SwRI
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A coronal mass emission as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time Chandra has discovered this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
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Dark, narrow, 100-meter-long stripes running on the surface on Mars were probably evidence of today’s flowing water. Since then it has been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa / JPL / University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photo of the International Space Station’s Aurora green lights in October 2015
Nasa / Scott Kelly
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Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust that stood three light-years high, bursting with gas jets of inverted shooting stars, was captured by Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010.
Nasa / ESA / STScI
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The first selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012
Nasa / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
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Death of a star: This image from Nandra’s Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy
Nasa
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Arrokoth, the farthest object ever explored, pictured here on January 1, 2019 by a camera on Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth
Getty
5/10
An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud Galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space like this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic matter
Nasa
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The first ever image of a black hole captured by the Event Horizon telescope as part of a worldwide collaboration involving Nasa, released on April 10, 2019. The image reveals the black hole in the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole inhabits about 54 million light-years from Earth
Getty
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Pluto, as pictured by Nasa’s New Horizons spacecraft when it first flew over the dwarf planet in July 2015
Nasa / APL / SwRI
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A coronal mass emission as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time Chandra has discovered this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun
Nasa
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Dark, narrow, 100-meter-long stripes running on the surface on Mars were probably evidence of today’s flowing water. Since then it has been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand
Nasa / JPL / University of Arizona
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Morning Aurora: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photo of the International Space Station’s Aurora green lights in October 2015
Nasa / Scott Kelly
Researchers have found, for example, that there is a large saltwater reservoir beneath that bright, glowing crater.
The reservoir could have been mobilized by the impact that the crater made in the first place, and helped leave the salt deposits that are now on the planet’s surface and create the alien glow.
In another paper, researchers reported that there were hydrated chloride salts in the center of the crater, at its brightest point. Such salt normally dries out quickly, suggesting that new brine is pushed up through the surface and that saline liquids can still be found in Ceres.
Another paper suggests that Ceres has only recently stopped undergoing a period of activity of ice volcanoes, which began nine million years ago.
And even more research shows that the mounds and hills found in the crater could be formed after water flow – created by the original impact – froze. Such behavior has only been seen earlier on Earth and Mars, and also indicates that Ceres would have been active until relatively recently.
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