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Posted by windbag on June 7, 2008, 7:20 pm
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David Williams wrote:
> -> Ceres might be boring like the moon, but it's composition is worlds
> -> apart from the lunar mantle-blob that lights our night sky. The
> -> physical features on the next worldlet out from Mars might be far more
> -> Earthlike than anything resembling our moon -- or even dusty Mars.
>
> Earthlike? Ceres is far too small to have an atmosphere, or liquid
> water on the surface. Unlike some satellites such as Europa or
> Enceladus, Ceres is not tidally heated, so water can't exist in the
> interior, either. Almost certainly, Ceres is as dead as the moon, and
> not very different in composition either.
>
> I forget its name, but there is a spacecraft on its way to fly past
> Ceres and a few other bodies in the asteroid belt. If it shows Ceres
> to be anything other than a cratered wilderness, I'll be very
> surprised.
>
> dow
The Dawn mission will arrive at Ceres eventually, after also trawling
past Vesta on its stately, ion-powered journey through The Belt.
I'm guessing that Ceres still has its original mixture of minerals and
ices; unlike our moon (which had an unusual origin, less accretion
than conglomeration), or Mars which -- imo -- burned off its great
salt lake in a furious bout of magmaphreatism.
So, if Ceres does contain a frozen lake of water ice, some areas
should appear less cratered. Features formed by glacial erosion could
also exist. That big reflective spot might be a snow-capped peak,
unfettered by gravity and carved by ice into a magnificent Matterhorn.
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