File:PIA20667-Ceres-DwarfPlanet-Dawn-4thMapOrbit-LAMO-image87-20160322.jpg

English: PIA20667: Dawn LAMO Image 87

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20667

This image shows the rim of Occator crater, just east of the area containing the brightest spots on Ceres. The crater rim has collapsed here, leaving structures geologists refer to as terraces. Boulders of various sizes are visible among the terraces.

The outside of the crater rim is covered by smooth, ejected material from this relatively fresh crater. This ejecta blanket is lightly cratered and is dominated by linear structures, like ridges and furrows, with narrow fractures in the south. Scientists interpret the flow-like appearance of this terrain to be related to the highly cohesive nature of the ejected material as it was being deposited.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft took this image on March 22, 2016, in its low-altitude mapping orbit, at a distance of about 240 miles (385 kilometers) above the surface. The image resolution is 120 feet (35 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.