The dark material found on the protoplanet Vesta contains the mineral serpentine - and must therefore be of exogenic origin.
The Numisia crater just south of Vesta’s equator has a diameter of 30 kilometers. Images obtained by the camera system on board NASA’s spacecraft Dawn with the clear filter (left) show dark material in the crater walls and in the material ejected during impact. The camera system’s color filters can filter individual wavelengths from the reflected light and thus make further variations in the surface composition visible (right). In data like this the researchers found the characteristic fingerprints of the mineral serpentine.
The Numisia crater just south of Vesta’s equator has a diameter of 30 kilometers. Images obtained by the camera system on board NASA’s spacecraft Dawn with the clear filter (left) show dark material in the crater walls and in the material ejected during impact. The camera system’s color filters can filter individual wavelengths from the reflected light and thus make further variations in the surface composition visible (right). In data like this the researchers found the characteristic fingerprints of the mineral serpentine.
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Data from NASA's Dawn mission, analyzed for the first time, suggest that brine rose from the depths and organic compounds were deposited in Urvara crater.
Recently new, very sensitive observations of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and its instruments NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery) an ACS (Atmospheric Chemistry Suite) became available and initiated a number of interesting scientific questions. Some of them are open PhD projects using the MPS General Circulation Model (MPS-GCM).