Just what are those bright, glowing spots on the surface of mini-planet Ceres?
NASA and scientists of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, are hoping that the latest photos sent back to Earth from the Dawn space probe, taken from 21,000 miles above the tiny planet's surface, will help solve the mystery,
the Christian Science Monitor reports.
So far, they're guessing they may be ice, though that is deemed unlikely because ice would be unstable on an airless body, or perhaps deposits of salt, the BBC reports.
The photos emerged when Dawn began taking snapshots of the dwarf planet's north pole on April 10. At least 10 of the bright spots have been identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, but plans are for Dawn to take a much closer look, dropping to 8,400 miles for 15 days, before, on May 9, spiraling even lower, to get shots of the glowing spots in up to 20 times better detail than those taken by Hubble,
Space.com reports.
Chris Russell, Dawn's principal investigator, told BBC News, "It may be a surface composition situation in that the different material at that particular spot conducts heat differently than in the other area. So, the first thing you go to when you see different temperatures is the different thermal conductivity of the surface material."
Dawn launched in September 2007, at a cost of $466 million, Space.com notes, and orbited dwarf planet Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012, before leaving for Ceres. It will continue to investigate Ceres until June of next year when it will run out of fuel. It is the only spacecraft to have orbited and investigated two planetary bodies.
Dawn spent over a month on Ceres' dark side before finally capturing photos of the planet's north pole and its bright patches,
NASA notes.
Ceres, a 590-mile diameter planet first discovered in 1801, is between Mars and Jupiter, and is the largest object in the asteroid belt, made up of 25 percent water ice. It is considered more akin to outer solar system planets than Vesta, which is more similar to planets in the inner solar system, the Monitor reports.
"Both objects are intact protoplanets left over from the solar system's early days. Investigating them should reveal key insights about how rocky planets such as Earth came to be," Space.com stated.
It's a good year for outer space buffs, since NASA probe New Horizons is planning a nearby pass of Pluto on July 14, "lifting the veil on a body that has remained mysterious since its 1930 discovery," Space.com noted.
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